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University of California Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

University History Series

THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

BERKELEY, 1919-1982

Interviews with

Josephine Smith Elizabeth Scott

Margaret Murdock Marian Diamond

Agnes Robb Mary Ann Johnson

May Dornin Eleanor Van Horn

Josephine Miles Katherine Van Valer Williams
Gudveig Gordon-Britland

With an Introduction by
Helene Maxwell Brewer

Interviews Conducted by
Suzanne B. Riess
1981, 1982

This manuscript is made available for research
purposes. No part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication without the written permission of
the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History
Office, 486 Library, and should include identification
of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited
as follows :

To cite the volume: The Women's Faculty Club of
the University of California, Berkeley, 1919-1982,
an oral history series conducted 1981-1982,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1983.

To cite individual interview: Josephine Smith,
"An Interview with Josephine Smith," an oral
history conducted in 1981 by Suzanne B. Riess,
in The Women's Faculty Club of the University of
California, Berkeley, 1919-1982, Regional Oral
History Office, The Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley, 1983.

Copy No .

Entrance to the Women's Faculty Club

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB by Helene Maxwell Brewer i

INTERVIEW HISTORY x

I AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPHINE SMITH 1

II AN INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET MURDOCK 29

III AN INTERVIEW WITH AGNES ROBB 67

IV AN INTERVIEW WITH MAY DORNIN 81

V AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPHINE MILES 103

VI AN INTERVIEW WITH GUDVEIG GORDON-BRITLAND 124

VII AN INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH SCOTT 149

VIII AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN DIAMOND 170

IX AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY ANN JOHNSON 180

X AN INTERVIEW WITH ELEANOR VAN HORN 204

XI AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHERINE VAN VALER WILLIAMS 225

APPENDICES 254

INDEX 304

INTRODUCTION TO THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB

The first time I entered the Women's Faculty Club was in 1924, when my
mother and I came up from San Mateo for lunch with Professor Charles G.
Osgood of Princeton. To my sixteen-year-old eyes the club rested on clouds
of glory. My knowledge of architectural style was nonexistent, but if
pressed for details I would have sworn that it surpassed the Parthenon.
Actually I remember nothing but the dining room, which seemed to me
marvelously and suitably beautiful, all dark panels and white walls and
darker gleaming floors, with chairs and tables stretching into the undefined
distance. The food was incomparable, the waitresses exquisite as they
floated to the tables, the clatter of dishes symphonically exalting. This
was Parnassus.

About thirty-two years later I returned to Berkeley, this time to
read in The Bancroft Library. I can't remember where I stayed that summer.
I do remember that I was miserably uncomfortable and that The Bancroft's
Julia Macleod, whom I had known years before at the Huntington Library,
recognized the external signs of my discomfort and said, "Why don't you
go over to the WFC and ask Margaret Murdock if there's a room available?"
I did not, because my sixteen-year-old' s perception of the club was still
strong and I was overcome by an attack of quintessential unworthiness.

When I arrived the next summer, Julia telephoned Margaret Murdock
directly, and there was indeed room. Miss Murdock welcomed me, and assured
me I was not unbearably intrusive, and not committing a heinous crime by
planning to stay for all of three months. She furthermore pointed out
that I had been given a most desirable room, with a connecting bath and
a view of the club's garden, and that I had an extra large closet.

Thus began for me an unbroken and most happy sequence of summer visits,
always as long as I could stretch my vacation from teaching American
literature at Queens College. Several years later one of the permanent
residents said to me, "There are two sure signs of summer here: first
the swallovs arrive at Capistrano, and then you come in from New York."
For me, to eat and sleep at the club, and to read in The Bancroft Library,
constituted the ideal life.

My impression of the Women's Faculty Club in 1957 was, first, of all
kinds of trees, and of flowers, especially roses and heliotrope. Two
Chinese magnolias arched over the stairs, as they do today. A bit of bygone
bliss was the large parking lot across the way, in one corner of which
grew a beautiful Roman pine. Parking permits were unheard of.

Crossing the threshhold, in the office downstairs sat Miss Murdock
and Mrs. Gudveig Gordon-Britland. Margaret Murdock seemed to know almost
every man, woman, or child who stepped into the place, and she had a compre
hensive knowledge of their illnesses and other vital statistics. She and
Mrs. Gordon-Britland officiated.

There was no elevator, nor was there a ramp for those who could not,
or preferred not to use the stairs. The powder room for women guests was
on the second floor, not conveniently on the ground floor as it is today.
The west end of the basement was roughly-finished, something like a large
cave, a poorly-lighted storage place for miscellaneous objects chests
of drawers, suitcases, trunks, pictures, furniture that members didn't
want, and dim bundles of cherished newspapers and magazines from years
back.

In those days the club was decorated in a style called "Old Berkeley,"
which, depending on the eye of the beholder, either meant something
pejorative "dark and dingy," to quote a visiting nun from Chicago or,
to many like me, meant weathered, old-fashioned charm, in some ways out
of date, but exactly what was needed. The lounge and library were furnished
with some of the treasures that now help to make these rooms outstanding,
but then hardly affected the distinctly more bland general effect of that
day.

The acoustics of the club were extraordinary. No carpets covered
.the halls or stairways. If one ascended in the usual fashion one clattered
on each step. My first afternoon, as I was going upstairs with my suitcase,
someone leaned over the second story railing and shouted, "Less noise!
Do you want to ruin those stairs?" To tiptoe was no better; the stairs
responded with mighty creaks. Worst of all, occupants of the second story
rooms could hear every footstep, soft or loud, in the room overhead, and
all too clear were the casual conversations or the typing of one's
neighbors to the left or the right.

Nowadays each room in the Women's Faculty Club has its own shower
and toilet, but in those days most of the rooms "shared" bathrooms, and
on the basis of how cooperative one's bathmate proved to be, lifelong
friendships or outspoken animosities resulted.

A wall telephone was located at the end of the hall. Buzzers in each
room summoned one to the telephone, or announced the visitor. Here again
the splendid acoustics came into play. if a call came after nine o'clock,
one knew one was waking the sleeping on that floor, and then some. There
was no doubt that every word could be overheard. More than once occupants
have been questioned at breakfast about the details of a call that had
come in at 9:30 or 10 the previous evening.

iii

However, private telephones could be installed. The summer I got
one, the installer in some way also crossed the wires of Dean Davidson's
phone with those of a local liquor store. The mishap happened on a Friday
and the correction could not be made until the following Monday. Mrs.
Davidson was reportedly nearly out of her wits disclaiming her ability
to supply the desired brands of gin and scotch to her callers.

In the late fifties the dining room looked very much as it had looked
in 1924, the dark tables and chairs, the dark floor. Over near a sunny
window stood the Dean's Table, described in several of the interviews here.
At a discreet distance was the Family Table, where the "Regulars" sat.
When I first went to the club the newcomers sat at one end, and the old
guard at the other, but before the summer was over we were somewhat amalga
mated. It was quickly apparent that Rule //I at dinner time was that no
one was to sit in May Dornin's chair the last chair on the left as one
looked toward the entrance. This seemingly rigid rule was based on the
practicalities of Miss Dornin's lef t-handedness.

Unwritten Rule #2 was that no one, save a permanent member, was to
cut any of the roses. This was because Lucille Czarnowski, a former member
of the Physical Education Department, regularly arranged the flowers, and
no one but she cut the flowers. (One of her accomplished arrangements
can be seen in a photograph in the Treasure Book on display in the library
of the club.)* One summer an innocent newcomer did cut a rose that looked
the model for a Jackson and Perkins advertisement. A number of us held
our breaths until dinnertime when we could learn how that transgressor
had survived. (She did.)

The second and third floor kitchenettes each contained rather unsatis
factory refrigerators, not really adequate for storage purposes of any
amount, with the result that members' jars of juices, yogurts, stashes
of cheese and apples, were inevitably jostled around. Unenforceable
unwritten Rule #3 dictated that members' comestibles be clearly kept
distinct from each other!

The club manager in those years was Mrs. Lucille Phipps, and liquor in
the club was frowned upon. I am under the impression that it was actively
discouraged at the Family Table, except on special occasions, but non
residents sometimes brought bottles to their tables. When that happened
the waitress rushed for wine glasses and Mrs. Phipps darted forward,

*Treasures of the Women's Faculty Club of the University of California,
Berkeley, compiled in 1971 in memory of Mary Frances Patterson, organizer
and chairman of the Department of Household Art, UC 1914-1949.

corkscrew outstretched. Once a friend and I had guests and wine and
in the flurry I leaned back and asked Mrs. Phipps if I couldn't save trouble
by turning things over to the friendly student-waitress. "No! No!" she
replied. "My girls may not even touch a corkscrew, and never a bottle!"

Although I may seem to stress eccentric behavior, eccentricities did
not dominate the club. It was quite simply a charming place. I have read
in numerous university collections in the United States, as well as in
the National Archives and the Library of Congress, and my pleasantest and
most congenial summers were spent at the Women's Faculty Club at Berkeley.
I have stayed in dorms, hotels, special clubs, and faculty clubs, but I
have never stayed in a place where, all in all, there was such general
friendliness among a highly diverse and professionally preoccupied group
of women.

Mrs. Alfred McLaughlin, who regularly came over from San Francisco
for six weeks every summer to "refresh" herself, used to say, "It's the
community of spirit that helps do it, and the variety of those interesting
women." Several of the permanent residents told me that the regular
academic year was a more interesting time "more prima donnas" but I recall
anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geneticists, historians, nutrition
ists, librarians, social workers, students of linguistics, a charming expert
on urban renewal, a young woman who eventually got a black belt in judo
and who reclaimed the nearly extinct Miwok language, graduate students,
high school teachers taking refresher courses, and visiting faculty and
researchers from France, Germany, Italy, England, Japan, and Russia.
Undoubtedly there were others, like the young Persian who spoke very little
English but said grandly, "I do not need English. Mathematics is the
universal language." Specialists and interested non-specialists met on
a common footing and exchanged ideas.

One could go any place alone then. Members enjoyed the walk from
the Durant Hotel bus stop up the treelined path to the club. I remember
a saunter across the campus at midnight, stopping to look at the moonlit
Library and Campanile as well as the shadows in Faculty Glade.

The atmosphpre in the club began to change in the early sixties. Some
of the pleasantest of the Regulars left the club for retirement homes.
It became clear to members who had long believed that they would spend
the rest of their lives in the quiet security of this place that they now
faced the unsettling fact that they would have to move elsewhere within
a few years. Other residents moved from Berkeley for academic reasons.
Others became ill and ailing and often didn't come to lunch or dinner.

The student revolution was sweeping this campus, and it exacerbated
the emerging temperamental differences between older and younger residents.
Two examples will illustrate. One evening at dinner we had to listen to
a rancorous denunciation of long hair as worn by men: improper, effeminate,

antisocial, and a great deal more. A summer visitor tried to defend this
manifestation of delinquency and degradation. The table rocked with argument
and the unfortunate defender was in partial limbo for the rest of the week.
Another target was the Beatles. Although they had been around for at least
seven years, the Beatles suddenly became representative of the decline
in American morals. Name any regrettable development of the early 1960s,
and a Beatle could probably be found at the bottom of it unless it was
the alleged weaknesses of the university administration, another subject
that resulted in monologues of denunciation from several of the Regulars
while we summer people sat with eyes glazed.

At various times efforts were made to improve the physical ambience.
A major undertaking was the remodeling of the dining room in 1967. When
the new dining room was opened the reactions were predictably at odds.
Some of the members were delighted, and confessed they had long thought
the room cheerless; others thought the change unnecessary, some of the
long-time members describing themselves as heartbroken. Indeed, in 1975
when at last the halls and stairs were laid with carpets, red, one of the
longtime residents announced that she would never set foot in the club
again.

As the student revolution of the sixties progressed, it seemed to
me that the resident members of the club became newly aware of their own
vulnerability and clearly increasingly fearful for their safety and the
safety of the building. In the first years of my stay there it was really
a place set apart, hidden in trees and so private that unaware people were
often surprised to see it. But now strangers, not remotely academic,
seemed to be sleeping in the side garden. Sometimes we could look out
and see unauthorized "picnics" (for want of a better word) . There were
persistent rumors of how unsafe the groves of trees along Strawberry Creek
had become. A friend told me that as she was coming through Faculty Glade
at noon someone tried to snatch her purse.

The fear of fire became obsessive with some of the permanent residents,
and with good reason there were no overhead sprinklers and no fire sheathing
in the building. Fire laws decreed that the windows at the end of the
halls on the second and third floor should be closed at night. However
these windows opened on fire escapes, and some of the Regulars feared that
intruders would come up this way. On hot nights summer visitors' insistence
on opening windows caused distress to several of the permanent residents.

Signs on every floor warned residents not to go out by themselves
at night, but if possible to go in groups of three. One of the members
said to me, "I guess we keep the line to the Campus Police pretty busy."
No more midnight strolls across the campus for any of us.

As a summer visitor, I could not know all the inner details of what
went on. In addition, between August 1966 and September 1974 I spent a
considerable amount of time in Japan, so my visits, when they happened,
were brief, but it became increasingly apparent that physically the club
was deteriorating badly, that mere patchwork would not help, and that the
treasury could not possibly cover the cost of needed rehabilitation.

As the physical condition of the club went downhill, unnerving rumors
about imminent dissolution, demolition, or coopting the building grew.
Word reached me in Tokyo that the School of Optometry wanted the space
occupied by the club for parking places. (The club had already lost its
capacious parking place because an addition to Optometry was to be built.)
Where roses, heliotrope, lemon verbena, and Chinese magnolias had flourished
was now to be a large asphalt parking area next to the "woodpile" that
had been the club. If not that, then we might as well all start looking
for boarding houses, because the History Department was surely going to
convert the place into carrels. Also the Women's Center caused consternation
"The kiddies have taken over the second floor," I learned by letter.

Even before 1966, the rumors included a proposed merger with The
[Men's] Faculty Club. One board member said to me, "This place is a
tinderbox. If it hasn't already been condemned as uninhabitable, it soon
will be. The club can't meet the required budget. We should seriously
talk about a merger with the men." Of course the division of opinion on
this matter was extraordinary, and passionate.

Efforts to raise funds to meet the budget were inadequate. A distin
guished summer resident of many years, stressing that she had long
contributed to the university, said, "If they can't afford to run the club,
and if the university won't help, the club shouldn't keep up this struggle
to exist. But what a tragedy for the dream of Lucy Stebbins." The old
argument was heard that the Women's Faculty Club was no longer a club for
women faculty. Their absence from the list of club members was ludicrously
conspicuous. "Why don't more of them join?" Predictably, the board was
criticized.

The prospect of demolition, of having nothing where this true haven
had stood for so many years, filled one with a feeling of helplessness
and dismay. The sense of desolation was underscored when for financial
reasons the club could not meet the union demand for wages in the kitchen
the club stopped serving dinners in 1971 and the residents, like waifs,
went to the men's club where they were shunted to a side porch. Or they
ate at a nearby beanery, or they chose to heat soup in an upstairs
kitchenette.

The interviews and the appended documents report the worries and the
struggles over the issue of merger, an issue that took ten years to resolve
fully. Many of the interviewees refer to Peg Uridge. In 1973 Margaret
Uridge was elected president of the club, and showed by personal example

vii

that that job falls just short of being a 24-hour assignment. Some said,
"Oh, Peg has just retired, and the presidency is a godsend for her," but
that diminishes unfairly what was true devotion. I remember coming in
and finding her sitting downstairs, on a Sunday afternoon when the office
was usually locked, typing letters, answering the telephone, and responding
when the doorbell rang. She was extremely effective during the negotiations
with the men's club, and she worked tirelessly on the complicated job of
remodeling the club.

Miss Florence Minard of Mills College was another tireless member.
Years later one of her friends said, "Florence did a lot of work, some
of it above ground, some of it underground." She wrote letters to all
members describing the dangers of the situation and asking for contributions;
she devised the Treasure Book, which nowadays is frequently examined by
visitors to the club library; and at a dark time when the building had been
condemned as uninhabitable, she called in the Berkeley building inspector,
took him downstairs, and with him went over the foundation and the rest
of the structure, wringing from him the admission that although the building
needed fireproof ing, it was not in the last stages of collapse that had
been represented.*

A great deal of money was urgent, and there seemed to be no way of
raising it and no way of saving the Women's Faculty Club. In the nick
of time, in 1971 and the interviews again relate more of this came news
of the grant from the Haas family that saved the club.

Although the front elevation of the Women's Faculty Club today looks
much as it has always looked, the building that resulted from the renova
tion is a combination of the old and new. While preserving the best
features of the old it has of necessity and also by design introduced
improvements that have gone far beyond the simple and economical plan of
John Galen Howard. In addition, it admits men to active membership. Thus,
not long ago, I was sitting in the lounge and two men walked in. "This
is the nicest place on the campus," said one to the other, en route to
lunch. Not bad, I thought, for the dream of Lucy Stebbins.

Lucy Ward Stebbins's dream began over sixty years ago, and the oral
histories reach back across the decades to remember her. It has been a
pleasure for me to go back over the decades in my memories of the club.
I have controlled the temptation to chat about special friends at the club,
but I want to add something here about four particularly devoted members
who are as identified with its existence for me as is the name of its
foundress .

*See Appendices.

viii

One dear, kind person was Miss Sarah Davis, small, frail, with
precarious eyesight, but cordiality itself, in spite of what I considered
notably limited strength. Access into Miss Davis 's room was challenging
because of a series of ropes or clotheslines which stretched from wall
to wall, serving as auxiliary closets and filing cases. On one line hung
a few garments, while on the other were notes, letters, and sometimes
clippings. One would-be wit and summer visitor said at breakfast, "To
get into Miss Davis's room you've got to know the ropes." A freezing
silence followed. Miss Davis was a founding member and long the club
secretary.

Another kind person with limited strength was Mrs. Harold Bruce, the
widow of Harold Bruce of the English Department, and the sister of Walter
Morris Hart. She told me that when she was about forty her husband died
suddenly. Determined to teach, Dorothy Bruce went to Stanford for her
Ph.D. She could have perfectly well have gone to Berkeley, but she thought
her late husband's colleagues would be too kind to her academically, and
she wanted to earn her degree on her own merits. In spite of her failing
health she frequently invited a few fortunate summer residents to her room,
where she told numerous stories, and reminisced about the English Department,
and her gentle conversation and knowledge of the campus softened the sting
of newness for many newcomers. And if there is a heaven, next to her there is
her sister-in-law, Amy Bumstead, a person truly kind in the best sense
of the word.

But as far as a knowledge of the history of the university is concerned,
the two prize winners in my experience, at least were Margaret Murdock
and May Dornin. The scope of Margaret Murdock 's friendships and acquain
tances was astonishing. She loved to tell stories, yet was peerlessly
modest. Because she played the Campanile bells several times a week, she
often played songs in honor of foreign visitors at the club, particularly
on the days they were leaving. She was delighted to fill requests to play
favorites from Gilbert and Sullivan. Her own oral history is in The
Bancroft Library, and her memories of the club are contained herein.

May Dornin, also an interviewee in this oral history, was a walking
encyclopedia about the development of the university and the Bay Area.
It was only fitting that she was the University archivist. Yet her
enthusiasm reached far beyond. She had been a Sierra Club hiker and had
gone down the Colorado River at least twice. She was an expert photographer
with a beautiful sense of composition. Deeply interested in the history
of northern California, she had a vivid chronological sense of what had
happened. Her double room at the club was lined with books, and stacks
of books stood on the floor. When she started to talk about the university
her face lit up. She could tell delightful anecdotes about Benjamin Ide
Wheeler, usually presidentially on his horse. She was a devotee of John
Galen Howard and fascinating about the history of the landscaping of the

campus. She took me once on a tour of the changing neighborhoods of
Oakland and Berkeley, from Telegraph Avenue's Sather Gate to Jack London
Square, and I could never again look at those squalid buildings with
indifferent eyes.

May, like everyone involved in this story of the Women's Faculty Club,
loved the university. And like many of us, over the years the love became
a love of the memories. Before this tale of a summer visitor becomes too
much that, I will stop. But a good oral history interview makes one privy
to the moment, and I hope that someone has taped May's description of the
funeral of Henry Morse Stephens. Although Henry Morse Stephens died many
years earlier, in 1919, May's account of that hushed gathering overflowing
Faculty Glade, and of President Wheeler's eulogy, and of the tolling of
the Campanile bells, was so graphic that I always felt as if she had just
come in from the services. Amen, to history.

Helene Maxwell Brewer

January 1983
Berkeley, California

INTERVIEW HISTORY

There is no institution at any other great university in this country
comparable to the Women's Faculty Club of the University of California at
Berkeley. Why that is so has to do with women's "place" at various times,
in different ivied halls. The women who founded and supported the concept
of a separate women's club at Berkeley were impelled to such action as the
result of a grossly misguided denial to them of entry to The (significantly
so capitalized) Faculty Club. That rejection galvanized a certain group of
women to form a club and build a building.

In October 1923 the Women's Faculty Club moved into newly completed
quarters in a comfortable, handsome brown-shingled John Galen Howard-designed
home by the waters of Strawberry Creek. Sixty years later that event is
still remembered by a few, and the connections to that place on the Berkeley
campus for women of the faculty, the staff, and certain community women and
scholars from this country and abroad are, as ever, strong and very fond.
Whether the club was central to the lives of its members, or peripheral,
whether a residence or a place of work, an issue or a cause, it was always
a pleasant place to be. A refuge for some, a symbol and a rallying-place for
others, when the club's existence was threatened in the Sixties the members
really began to know and appreciate it, and each other, in a way they had
not before. Now, in 1983, this beautifully-landscaped, authentically old
corner of the Berkeley campus is more happily established than ever before,
more comfortable, and its oral history is a way of ensuring that the
vicissitudes of the years gone by are not entirely relegated to the archives.

The oral history of the Women's Faculty Club was proposed in 1981 with
the knowledge that there were available as interviewees club members who were
active with Lucy Ward Stebbins, the dean of women and leader among the
founders of the club in 1919. The span of interviews was conceived to
gather knowledge of the club's past, as well as to develop the chronology
of events leading up to the decade which threatened the club's existence as
a separate institution on the Berkeley campus. Oral history was particularly
well suited to the kind of anecdotal, recollected history-gathering the club
had in mind. The interviewees were chosen for their ability to be significant
informants, either participants or eye-witnesses. Not just one person or
point of view was elicited, and not everything was said, and not everyone
heard from, but the eleven interviews together tell a very f':ll story,
documentary and personal. The interviewees of course had their own life
histories, and for the sake of University of California history, the history
of women in academia, and women's history, some biographical material is
included.

The experience of doing this oral history was upbeat, cooperative, and
complex. It was a grand effort to try to encapsulate so much time and so many
people. The interviewees were responsive, concerned to recall, fairly, what
they knew, and as the reader will see, reluctant to indulge in blame or
hindsight. Each interviewee reviewed her transcript with care. We all look
forward to the history being used by scholars, and becoming a dog-eared
favorite in the Women's Faculty Club Library. It would be fine if this
effort spurred more club members to give their reminiscences to the club
historian, as they experience the significance of their institution and its
history.

The Women's Faculty Club Oral History was funded as a project of the club,
with generous support from Prytanean Alumnae, Inc. Individual donors to the
project were Josephine Miles, Mary Ann Johnson, Agnes Roddy Robb, Gudveig
Gordon-Britland, and Margaret Mould. We consider it fortunate that historian
Helena Maxwell Brewer was willing to delve into her memories to provide an
introduction to the club. And I wish to thank the office staff of the club
for unlocking the secrets of access to the vault, and for helping in many
ways.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record
autobiographical interviews with persons prominent in recent California
history. The office is under the direction of Willa K. Baum, division head,
and under the administrative supervision of James D. Hart, the director of
The Bancroft Library.

Suzanne B. Riess

Senior Editor/Interviewer

25 March 1983

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

xii
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

BERKELEY DAVIS IRVINE LOS ANGELES RIVERSIDE SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO i Mfei ?=$) ! SANTA BARBARA SANTA CRUZ

REGIONAL ORAL HISTORY OFFICE BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720

THE BANCROFT LIBRARY March 1981

UNIVERSITY HISTORY SERIES
INTERVIEWED BY ROHO

The following memoirs are part of the program to document the history of the
University with major support from the U.C. Berkeley Foundation or the University
itself.

Bound, indexed copies of the transcripts of the following interviews are
available at cost to libraries for deposit in noncirculating collections for
scholarly use.

Adams, Frank, "Frank Adams, University of California on Irrigation, Reclamation,
and Water Administration." 1956, 491 p.

*Amerine, Maynard A., "The University of California and the State's Wine Industry."
1971, 142 p.

*Bird, Grace Oral History Project, in Two Volumes

Volume I: "Leader in Junior College Education at Bakersfield and the University

of California." 1978, 184 p.
Volume II: "Bakersfield Remembers Grace V. Bird." 1978, 158 p.

Birge, Rs-"niopH Thayer, "Raymond Thayer Birge, Physicist." 1960, 395 p.

Blaisdell, Allen C., "Foreign Students and the Berkeley International House,
1928-1961." 1968, 419 p.

Chaney, Ralph Works, "Ralph Works Chaney, Ph.D., Paleobotanist , Conservationist."
1960, 277 p.

*Chao, Yuen Ren, "Chinese Linguist, Phonologist, Composer, and Author." 1977, 242 p.

Corley, James V., "Serving the University in Sacramento." 1969, 143 p.

Cross, Ira Brown, "Portrait of an Economics Professor." 1967, 128 p.
*Cruess, William V., "A Half Century in Food and Wi.e Technology." 1967, 122 p.

Davidson, Mary Blossom, "The Dean of Women and the Importance of Students." 1967, 79 p

Dennes, William R. , "Philosophy and the University Since 1915." 1970, 162 p.

Donnelly, Ruth, "The University's Role in Housing Services." 1970, 129 p.

Dornin, May, (1981-in process)

*Memoirs of people prominent in the history of the University, undertaken as part
of another series or as diverse memoirs with extramural funding.

University History Series xiii

Ebright, Carroll "Ky", "California Varsity and Olympics Crew Coach." 1968, 74 p.

Erdman, Henry E. , "Agricultural Economics: Teaching, Research, and Writing:
University of California, Berkeley, 1922-1969." 1971, 252 p.

Evans, Clinton W. , "California Athlete, Coach, Administrator, Ambassador." 1968, 106 p.

Foster, Herbert B., "The Role of the Engineer's Office in the Development of the
University of California Campuses." 1960, 134 p.

Gordon, Walter A., "Athlete, Officer in Law Enforcement and Administration,

Governor of the Virgin Islands," Volume I: 1979, 397 p.; Volume II: 1980, 224 p.

Grether, Ewald T., (1981-in process)

Griffiths, Farnham P., "The University of California and the California Bar."
1954, 46 p.

*Hagar, Ella Barrows, "Continuing Memoirs: Family, Community, University." 1974, 272 p,
Hamilton, Brutus, "Student Athletics and the Voluntary Discipline." 1967, 50 p.

*Harding, Sidney T., "A Life in Western Water Development." 1967, 524 p.
Harris, Joseph P., (1981-in process)

*Hart, James D., "Fine Printers of the San Francisco Bay Area." 1969, 86 p.
Hays, William Charles, "Order, Tr.ste, and Grace in Architecture." 1968, 241 o.

*Heller, Elinor Raas, (1981-in process)

Hildebrand, Joel H. , "Chemistry, Education, and the University of California."
1962, 196 p.

*Hotchkis, Preston, Sr., "One Man's Dynamic Role in California Politics and Water
Development, and World Affairs." 1980, 121 p.

*Huff, Elizabeth, "Teacher and Founding Curator of the East Asiatic Library: from
Urbana to Berkeley by Way of Peking." 1977, 278 p.

*Huntington, Emily, "A Career in Consumer Economics and Social Insurance. " 1971, 111 p.

Hutchison, Claude B., "The College of Agriculture, University of California,
1922-1952." 1962, 524 p.

*Jenny, Hans, (1981-in process)

Johnston, Marguerite Kulp, and Mixer, Joseph R., "Student Housing, Welfare, and
the ASUC." 1970, 157 p.

University History Series xi v

*Joslyn, Maynard A., "A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry."
1974, 151 p.

Kerr, Clark, (1981-in process)
Kroeber-Quinn, Theodora, (1981-in process)

Lehman, Benjamin H., "Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area
from 1920 Onward." 1969, 367 p.

Lenzen, Victor F., "Physics and Philosophy." 1965, 206 p.
Lessing, Ferdinand D., "Early Years." 1963, 70 p.

*McGauhey, Percy H. , "The Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory: Administration,
Research, and Consultation, 1950-1972." 1974, 259 p.

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and Teaching." 197.5, 318 p.

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Merritt." 1962, 137 p.

*Metcalf, Woodbridge, "Extension Forester, 1926-1956." 1969, 138 p.
Meyer, Karl F., "Medical Research and Public Health." 1976, 439 p.

Miles, Josephine, "Josephine Miles: Poetry, Teaching, and Scholarship." 1980, 344 p.
Mitchell, Lucy Sprague, "Pioneering in Education." 1962, 174 p.

Mixer, Joseph R. , and Johnston, Marguerite Kulp, "Student Housing, Welfare, and
the ASUC." 1970, 157 p.

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Department." 1961, 48 p.

Neylan, John Francis, "Politics, Law, and the University of California." 1962, 319 p.
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1880-1895." 1963, 173 p.

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1962." 1963, 471 p.

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of the Public Health." 1960, 102 p.

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University Extension, 1892-1960." 1962, 248 p.

University History Series

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1976, 134 p.

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1920-1978." 1979, 217 p.

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*Stewart, George R., "A Little of Myself." 197"2, 319 p.

*Stewart, Jessie Harris, "Memories of Girlhood and the University." 1978, 70 p.

*Taylor, Paul Schuster, in Three Volumes,

Volume I: "Education, Field Research, and Family." 1973, 342 p.

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1925-1968." 1976, 259 p.

Wessels, Glenn A., "Education of An Artist." 1967, 326 p.
Wilson, Garff, (1981-in process)
*Winkler, Albert J., "Viticultural Research at UC Davis, 1921-1971." 1973, 144 p.

Witter, Jean C., "The University, the Community, and the Lifeblood of Business."
1968, 109 p.

Woods, Baldwin M., "University of California Extension." 1957, 102 p.

Wurster, William Wilson, "College of Environmental Design, University of California,
Campus Planning, and Architectural Practice." 1964, 339 p.

University History Series xvi

"Centennial History Project, 1954-1960." 329 p.

Includes interviews with George P. Adams, Anson Stiles Blake, Walter C.
Blasdale, Joel H. Hildebrand, Samuel J. Holmes, Alfred L. Kroeber, Ivan
M. Linforth, George D. Louderback, Agnes Fay Morgan, and William Popper.

"Dental History Project, 1967." (School of Dentistry, UC San Francisco), 1114 p.

Includes interviews with Dickson Bell, Reuben L. Blake, Willard C. Fleming,
George A. Hughes, Leland D. Jones, George F. McGee, C. E. Rutledge, William
B. Ryder, Jr., Herbert J. Samuels, Joseph Sciutto, William S. Smith, Harvey
Stallard, George E. Steninger, and Abraham W. Ward.

*"The Prytaneans: An Oral History of the Prytanean Society and Its Members."
In two volumes.

Volume I, "1901-1920." 1970, 307 p.
Volume II, "1921-1930." 1977, 313 p.

JOSEPHINE SMITH

TABLE OF CONTENTS Josephine Smith

1) Founding Members and the Building Committee

2) Managing the Club

3) Residential Members

4) Arrangements with the Men's Club 14

5) The Vote Not to Merge 16

6) The Club as a Forum

7) Personal Background and Information 21

8) Thirty-six Years at the University 24

9) Interests in Printing, Writing, and Skiing 26

Josephine Smith
August 17, 1981
Interviewed at home

1) Founding Members and the Building Committee

Smith: One of the reasons that I am a little hesitant about washing any
dirty linen in public is I don't think that's politic. The one
thing I'm proud of is that in the thirty years in which I was
budget officer, nothing ever got out of my office. No raises, no
promotions, no questions, no appropriations, no anything! It was
just absolutely confidential, as it was supposed to be.

Riess: Well, let's just see what happens. And as I said to you, if you,
when you get the record back, want to wash the linen, that's okay.

Smith: Yes, all right.

I was horrified to realize that this year is my fiftieth year
in belonging to the club. [Women's Faculty Club] I have an
elephant's memory, so I sat down one day and thought about the
progress of it. This is the chronological order as I see it.

In the first place, I think the club is unique if you look at
particularly other women's faculty clubs: we have always been in
the black. Now, there were many, many times when we came awfully
near either Scylla or Charybdis, and you never knew where it was
going to hit you. But we weathered every storm, and now we are
knock on wood! financially sound.

Riess: Were you always associated with the budget end of the club? From
the beginning?

Smith: It was the budget end of the university.

Riess: But I wondered also whether as soon as you became part of the club,
that was an interest of yours.

Smith: No. My interest was in having a quiet place to have lunch. As soon
as the pressure became heavier and heavier, I reserved a table
permanently by the window, took my Saturday Evening Post, which was
then current, and sat there. One of the personnel officers came up
to me, and she said, "I'd like to talk business."

Smith:

Riess:
Smith :
Riess :
Smith:

I said, "Oh, no you don't! This is my time. Why, I'll talk
business at one o'clock, and not before." So that was that.
Everybody understood that I was like who was it? Gloria Swanson.
"I vant to be alone." [laughter]

I was a director of the club for quite a while, but when I got
the budget off my neck, then I became most actively interested in
the club, and not only was chairman of the finance committee, but
then I became treasurer, and then I became the financial advisor
because, as I say, figures are my line.

When I retired
quite some time ago
and I don't wish to
be an awful fate!
auditing firm that
[Goodell and Henry]
and could no longer
put what I 've done
years.

, which was in 1954 you can see that that was
, everybody that I know on the campus is gone,
live forever; I think the Flying Dutchman would
so when I retired, the auditor that we had, the
I had gotten for half price for the club,
had so much business that he moved to Oakland
take care of us, so I said, "Well, might as well
to use," so I audited the books for nearly ten

At that time, Margaret Murdock had taken over the management of
the office. She, of course, had the very first knowledge of the
club, because she was Miss [Dean Lucy] Stebbins' assistant before
the club was established. She knows all the beginning. I think
she was there in 1919, and 1919 was the date in which I began my
university service.

And you joined the club in 1931, you said earlier?

Yes.

And why hadn't you considered joining it before then?

Because I didn't think it was necessary. At that time, the academic
atmosphere prevailed, and the administrative people were on
sufferance sort of. Not exactly on sufferance, but there were not
so many of them. I'll come to that in the beginning. This is the
prologue.

If you look at the record of other clubs, and particularly
women's clubs, I don't think you're going to find that they had the
financial record that we have. I told you about always being in
the black. Long before ERA, and all the publicity they got. The
club was established on the same principles.

Dean Stebbins was a wonderful example of the iron fist in the
velvet glove. She had an iron will, and she appeared very sweet on
the surface. But she was determined to get what she wanted, and
when she was told that the men's club, The Faculty Club (capitalized),
had no place for women, and did not want them, that was it.

Riess:

Smith:

Riess:
Smith:
Riess :
Smith:

Riess :
Smith:

Riess:

There were other early faculty women, like Jessica Peixotto, and
Agnes Fay Morgan. Why was it that Dean Stebbins took charge? Why
do you think she was the one?

That I don't know. I knew Miss Stebbins very well, because she
just lived a little ways down on Durant, and when I walked down to
go shopping, she always invited me in, or she was out on the porch
and I stopped. So in addition to what I knew of her in the club, I
came to know her personally very well.

I don't know why, except to use the vernacular she got her
back up, and probably at the way in which the then president of The
Faculty Club told her they did not want women, and had no place for
them. I think Margaret Murdock said that this happened the first
time that The Faculty Club extended their building. You see,
Maybeck did the Men's Faculty Club, and John Galen Howard did ours.

Although the Academic Senate denied the statement, it was
commonly known on the campus that they did not want women on the staff .
I think that is another thing that

On the staff! But they already had them on the staff.
I know, but they did not want to advance them.
I see, or encourage them in any way.

Or encourage them. At that time there was a list of very famous
women on the campus. Who was there? Miss Stebbins, Agnes Fay
Morgan, Mary Patterson, Jessica Peixotto, Pauline Sperry, and later

Who was Pauline Sperry? I don't know that name.

Mathematics. She may have been a little later than the rest of
these.

Also later, there was Sophia Levy, who achieved, I think,
national recognition that wasn't given to her by the University.
She was given a leave of absence, and was put in charge of the
mathematics training of the Air Force men in calculus for navigation.

Isn't that interesting?
tradition there.

Women in mathematics that's a bit of a

Smith: And Pauline Sperry was in mathematics, and very good. Here

s an

example of the way women were treated. Pauline Sperry 's friend was
Alice Tabor, who was an instructor in German, very thoroughly
scholarly person who did an outstanding job. She did not publish.
Pauline Sperry went many times to the Academic Senate, when Miss

Smith: Tabor's people got recognition, and pointed out that simply

because she did not publish, did not do research, she was held back.
Poor Miss Tabor stayed an instructor in German the rest of her
academic career. That's one reason why I was so interested in the
findings of this committee I don't know its formal name.* Even
now, women are $1700 per annum less than their masculine counter
parts. Well, that's that.

Oh, say, the women that have achieved distinction, the two
women that have received distinction in the club and been given the
position of Faculty Research Lecturer are Agnes Fay Morgan, and
Josephine Miles. [telephone rings; brief tape interruption]

Dr. Morgan was the first one. [Faculty Research Lecturer] She
was very concerned. I knew Dr. Morgan very well. Although she had
often given reports personally to the Regents, and even several
times exhibits of her nutrition research, she said she had nightmares
before the lecture. She thought how awful it would be if nobody
came. She was very much on pins and needles, but when the time came
there was an overflow audience.

Riess: You've mentioned a lot of people who were on the first board. There
were a couple of other names: E.M. Coulter.

Smith: Oh, yes. Edith Coulter, Dr. Coulter. I guess she had a Ph.D. She
was the first president of the Building Committee. She was a
professor of librarianship.

Riess: And Sarah Davis, and her campus address was Hearst Hall. She was in
the Physical Education Department?

Smith: Yes.

Riess: And Fancher in home economics?

Smith: Helen Fancher.

Riess: And Agnes Fay Morgan. Mary Patterson was in home economics also?

Smith: Yes. There was a Department of Household Science first. It

consisted of the two heads, Agnes Fay Morgan, and Mary Patterson.
They did not get on together because their aims were entirely
different. Dr. Morgan was engaged in research in nutrition, in which
Miss Patterson was not interested. Miss Patterson was very artistic,

^Committee on Senate Policy, 1982.

Smith: and was interested in household science. So they agreed to split,
and made two departments: the Department of Nutrition and the
Department of Household Arts.

By the way, Miss Patterson did the seal that we [Women's
Faculty Club] use. I discovered it in the vault. I think Margaret
Murdock told me about it. I took it out, and printed it, and was so
enamored of it that I put it on the letterhead, and everyone fell
for it. Now we have it spread all over the place: the dishes, etc.

Riess: It's a very nice monogram.

Smith: Yes, isn't it? I think it is beautiful. That is symbolic of Mary
Patterson's work.

Riess: Just to back up again, before Lucy Stebbins brought the women

together to talk about a club, do you understand that there was an
informal manner of meeting of women?

Smith: That I don't know. Now, Margaret Murdock could tell you that. You
see, she knows all those things.

Riess: As a young administration person on campus, what was your view of
the women in the Women's Faculty Club?

Smith: The academics were snobby.
Riess: So it was another world.

Smith: It was another world. That brings me to the second year of the club.
At that time, it was set up, either Miss Stebbins or the Board of
Directors I can't remember who all the Board of Directors were.
On your list, if you put in Helen Fancher, you should put in
Margaret Beattie, who was in hygiene. And there are some more gaps
in there.

Riess: The seven-member board in 1919 was what I was looking at.

Smith: But I'm thinking about 1922, '23. To go back a couple of years to
the beginning. Dr. Morgan said they probably made her president
because she was the only person who would be tough enough to tell
anybody off. Those are her exact words to me. I don't think they
better be published.

There were two separate clubs at that time: the Building
Committee, which had its separate president, and its separate
board of directors, and which owned the building, which made itself
liable for the mortgage and had everything to do with the building;
and then tb^ club proper. The first year, only persons of academic
rank were eligible. That did not pay.

Smith: Dr. Morgan saw that the life of the club would be very short to
depend on that. So she insisted that they raise the dues, and
invite the persons at the head of the administrative staff of the
departments. I was invited at that time along with every other
secretary or administrator of that category, and did not see any
reason why I should belong.

Riess: In fact, they even had an associate status for people outside the
University, didn't they?

Smith: Yes. They thought that that would add a little glory, and took in
people such as Mrs. Baldwin Woods no, she came in later. Anyway,
they had various people that would add glory to the club.

Riess: In fact, was it to gather in some faculty wives, is that what you're
suggesting?

Smith: I think so.

Riess: So Agnes Fay Morgan had to be strong enough to face down what
particular group of people? People within the club?

Smith: At that time, there was a lot of I don't know whether it's feminine
jealousy, or just that feminines couldn't get along. There was a
lot of nasty little fights. Dr. Morgan just said what was what,
what they could do. That's how administrative people got into the
club. As you look over the roster now, it's ninety-nine and
9/10 percent administrative, and not faculty. You have an awful
time to interest the faculty. I have found that they look down
their noses at the administrative group.

Riess: Historically, but not any more.

Smith: Well, I don't know. I haven't been on the campus lately, so I don't
know what the attitude is.

Another point that I think what was I going to say?

Riess: I was going to ask you about this division between the Building

Committee and the club itself. One was in the service of the other?

Smith: The Building Committee, being responsible for the mortgage, held
the reins. Miss Edith Coulter was chairman of the Building
Committee, or the president of it, for ages and ages.

Riess: But I thought that was a committee that was supposed to dissolve as
soon as

Smith: Well, that didn't dissolve until the mortgage was paid.

Riess: And until the mortgage was paid, power in the club?

Smith: They owned the building, and the club paid rent to them, which were
their funds to pay on the mortgage.

I know the point that I wanted to make. It isn't particularly
apropos at this time. But you take an academic person, or a busy
administrative person, they don't have time to give to the affairs
of the club as they should. The most successful people have been
the administrative people. In looking back over the various
presidents, I think the two presidents that have done the most for
the club are Ruth Donnelly, who had charge of the housing committee,
and Margaret Uridge,who, as you know, was the reference librarian
for the university. Ruth Donnelly only was able to do that when
Mrs. Davidson released her from some of her duties in the dean of
women's office. The club was in very great financial danger at that
time, and Mrs. Davidson thought that this might be the only way to
meet the very critical situation. Mrs. Davidson felt justified in
doing this since the club is legally acknowledged as "an integral
part of the university."

Finally when the mortgage was paid, there was just one
organization. You see, before that the club paid $250 every month
to the Building Committee, and any more, if it were possible, which
it wasn't. So by those very small steps, we finally ended all
obligation. We burned the mortgage in the fireplace and had quite a
celebration.

Riess: I notice that the Building Committee set it up so that one quarter
of the financing was in stocks, and the rest was in bonds. What
happened to the stockholding aspect of that?

Smith: I don't know. Although at that time, when it was closed, I think I
was the chairman of the Building Committee. But I can't answer that.
I just don't know. I doubt if anybody does! [chuckles] Anyway,
that's that.

Then time went on after that, it was financially peaceful.
Riess: Was the Building Committee an elected committee every year?
Smith: Yes.
Riess: Was it, in fact, the most powerful?

Smith: Yes, I think so, although of course each committee thought it was
the more powerful. But really, since they owned the building, I
think that they were the more powerful.

Miss Coulter, as I say, reigned for many years as chairman of
the Building Committee. She was a bit autocratic, but I think that
a chairman has a right to be autocratic.

Riess: In all of those years, did the issue of joining with The Faculty
Club ever come up?

Smith: No, not yet.

Riess: That was not a recurrent theme over the years.

Smith : No .

2) Managing the Club

Smith: The cook who served so long was Mrs. Mabel Battle. I think the meals
were just like home cooking. I ate there day after day and never
tired of it any more than you tire of what you have at home. Mrs.
Battle finally reached the age of retirement and the club took meals
from the ASUC, the student service. It was very unsatisfactory; the
organization was very hard and arbitrary to deal with. The meals
came on a cart, and one time the cart upset, and there was no dinner.
So that didn't prove a success.

Then the club hired a cook from the union, and tied an albatross
around their necks, because the union had certain requirements, and
the union had regular salary increases. Finally it ended up that
the cook got more than the manager of the club. "The cook must have
a helper, who served so many hours," and so on.

Riess: How many meals was the cook responsible for?

Smith: The club served breakfast for the residents in the little dining room.
(I think it has another name now, but anyway, that's what we called
it.) The cook was responsible for lunch and dinner. And dinner was
the one that always put us in the red, because everyone went home,
particularly the faculty went home, and didn't want to come out again.

In the early days many of the faculty just met their wives and
had dinner there, and it was very pleasant. It declined and
declined until dinner became a Jonah.

Riess: You're saying that for a while there were men faculty that were
meeting their wives there?

Smith: Yes. I can remember Mr. Allen, who was professor of Greek, always
met Mrs. Allen at certain times, and they very often had dinner
there.

Riess: It was because she was a member.

Smith:

Riess:
Smith:
Riess :
Smith:
Riess :

Smith:

Riess :

Smith ;

Yes. You could bring a guest. But they weren't free to come over
of themselves, as they are now.

Was the lunch a lunch, or was it a dinner-type lunch?

It was a rather substantial lunch. Dinners used to be very nice.

But it was only lunch that you had when you were there, wasn't it?

Yes.

I've read in the history that originally Miss Stebbins had Miss
Ransom as manager. Was that of Ransom and Bridges School? Is that
the same woman?

Yes. That was she. She was the first person that I remember as
manager of the club. She was a very gracious manager, and it was
very successful. Then there have been- other managers, successful,
unsuccessful, gracious and non-gracious.

Tell me a little bit more about the role of the manager,
be a hostess?

Is she to

Yes. A sort of a hostess in general over the club and its activities.
Now we have, you might say, a sub-hostess of the dining room, whose
duty it is to see that everything is correct, and who takes care of
anything special or so on. I think the club have been very
fortunate. Mrs. U ridge got Mrs. Rockwell, who is a friend of hers,
as manager. And she, aside from Miss Ransom, to my mind, rates the
highest of any manager we've had. We've had a modern person, very
modern, as manager; we've had a conservative person; and we've had
temperamental managers, and so on.

The office was usually taken care of who kept the books first?
When Margaret Murdock was no longer president of the club I know,
we had Amy Bumstead, who was the accountant for the ASUC, as the
chief accountant. She did all the football and so on for the ASUC;
at that time, that was a million-dollar business. Miss Bumstead
took hold of our accounts and brought them all into shape, and
everything was wonderful. She reached the age of retirement, or she
had retired from ASUC, and I forget what happened her husband died
she no longer could manage the accounts. So Margaret Murdock, after
being president, took over charge of the office.

That was when I audited the books. I don't think it was for
quite ten years, but it was a long, long period. I saved the club
several thousand dollars by doing it. It was no effort for me; I
was very familiar with the procedure and everything, so I made all
the annual reports and did that. It isn't that l_ did it: I was just
there, and just able to do it.

Riess: Yes. It made sense.

Smith: I don't want any emphasis on the first personal pronoun singular.

I was very interested that Margaret, whose title, before she
had retired, was Credentials Counselor in Education she counseled
all those who graduated from the Department of Education should
have shown such an accurate aptitude for figures . I have only seen
one other person that could compare with it . In all those years
that I did that, she made one mistake, and it was seventy-five cents.
I spent more time chasing that seventy-five cents than I would
$75,000! [laughter] But she managed it most efficiently. It was
under her that Mrs. [Gudveig] Gordon- Britland succeeded her. She
had trained her .

Riess: Were these volunteer positions?

Smith: No. Margaret objected to taking money; she said she didn't need it
and she would work for the club for something like $300 a year,
which is $25 a month. Mrs. Bumstead was a paid position. I don't
know what it is now. I have no longer any means of knowing.

Then there came another president. I was still treasurer of
the club. I don't know whether I should say this or not, but I was
greatly irked. We had a Frenchman and his wife, and his name was
[Gaston] Abbo . He looked very good at the beginning, but things, to
my mind, were heading straight for bankruptcy.

Riess: A Frenchman and his wife?

Smith: He was manager of the club, and she supervised the kitchen.

Theoretically, it was a wonderful combination. But actually, as I
say, it brought the club to the brink of bankruptcy.

I was treasurer at that time, and I was very unpopular because
I kept howling "wolf." They said it was not the case, but the
figures remained that way. I spent quite a bit of thought in
various ways of saving money and recommendations to be made. And
the president at that time of the club did not see I wrote the
recommendations out and gave them to the secretary of the Board of
Directors to include in the minutes, but never once did they appear!
So I thought since that was the case, it was no "se wasting my time
any more, and I resigned as treasurer. Not from the club, but as
treasurer.

Riess: What year was this?

Smith: Oh, Lord, I don't know. Well, I think if you can find out what year
Margaret Thal-Larsen was president maybe somebody in the office
would know what year it was. [1967-1969]

Riess: Did your suspicions in fact prove correct?

Smith: I know at one time we had a balance of sixty dollars. I could make
no impression on several people who were very much in favor or were
very taken by the Frenchman and his wife.

Riess: I suppose they thought that was classy, to have a Frenchman and his
wife? Was it that?

Smith: Yes, it added eclat. [laughs]

Then there was of course there was one Board of Directors by
that time. I guess I still must have been on the Board of Directors.
They were a new bunch, and terribly modern, and the house they said
this was a worn-out building, and some people talked, I don't know
whether in joke or not, of tearing it down and building another one.
This was the beginning, you see, of the talk of joining with the
men's club.

Riess: Are you talking about the late sixties now?

Smith: It was about 1967, '68. It was around in that locality the late
1960s.

One of the older members, Mrs. Samuel May, Bernice May, was
very insulted that it was called an old building, all run-down, and
we needed new all over. So because she was on the city council, she
got the city inspector of buildings, Mr. Atkins, to come up and
review the condition of the building.* He said there is a letter
in the file somewhere; I have seen the letter he said that the
building was in absolutely sound condition. The foundations were as
good as when they were put in; the structure of the building had not
notably deteriorated; perhaps some of the wiring could be improved.
But if he were asked his opinion, he would say it was in excellent
condition.

Riess: That's very interesting. This modern board, what was the composition
of it?

Smith: You mean names?

Riess: I mean names, or I mean were they more academic than administrative?
Did they have some particular reason to throw over the Women's
Faculty Club?

*December 14, 1970. See Appendices.

Smith:

Riess:

Smith:

Riess:

Smith:

Oh, no. They were administrative. One was in the office of the
attorney for the Regents. The attorney was at that time let's see,
who was it? It was before [Donald L.] Reidhaar I can't think who
was the attorney.

Maybe it's not names that I want,
feeling at that time.

I want to know why there was that

It was due to a very modern manager. That's shown in the matter of
well, how can I best illustrate it? When we first served anything
but water, tea or coffee, it was sherry. Ruth Donnelly and I went
to Dean Stebbins and said, "How would it be if we had a pre-dinner
hour, a sherry hour, and we raised the money for it so that it did
not come out of the club's money." Dean Stebbins said it was a
fine idea. So we proceeded. We had several remarks from some
moss-bound people, but we proceeded and served sherry at the annual
dinner. At the next annual dinner we established the "Sherry Hour."

With this modern manager, who had permission to employ her
husband, we served cocktails. And believe me, they were very strong
cocktails, too. They were overloaded with brandy. I can take two
cocktails, but beyond that I don't usually go. These cocktails,
when I had one, I'd had more than the equivalent of two. Two people
came to disgrace that night, which didn't please me at all. I
thought it cheapened the club, particularly as the invited guests
were President [Charles] Hitch and Chancellor [Roger] Heyns and their
wives, and the occasion was the bestowal of the Centennial honors.

The modern people were people who were trying to make the club
popular at all costs, is that the idea?

Yes. Now, one thing, we had an art show, and took the living room,
and turned it into screens with an exhibit of pictures, and everybody
dressed up, and it was a big success. That was one thing to their
credit. But otherwise the attitude was very much modern, and "we'd
been in the back woods all the time." I was not in favor of that
attitude, nor of the way in which the Frenchman was hired.

After the previous manager had left due to ill health, we got a
housemother from one of the sororities. I thought that that would
be a good idea, that she would be sort of hardened to things and
requests and so on, and would know how to deal with it. She thought
the job was a walkover, and so easy she didn't need to give it any
attention, with the result that she didn't do what a couple of
members of the board had asked, so she was out of favor.

Then this Frenchman and his wife turned up, and even before she
had completed a month, she was dismissed! I did not care for that
way of doing business. I abstained from voting, because I didn't
approve of getting someone, and not even letting her finish a month
before being urged out the door to welcome a Frenchman who had no
conception of finances.

Smith: And that was when, as I say, I made recommendation after recommen
dation where you could save money or where you could cut corners,
and so on, and they never even appeared in the minutes.

Then, it ended up I think at one time where I know that we only
had sixty dollars leeway. That, to me, meant we were certainly on
the verge of bankruptcy. The policy at that time was to keep all
financial matters from the members. I think somebody got hold of
the fact that the club was not doing well financially, and that's
when the first inkling came of joining with the men's club, who had
an immense debt to the Regents.

3) Residential Members

Riess: In the midst of all of this, do the people who live there, the

residents of the club, do they represent a whole separate voice?

Smith: No. No.

Riess: Do they get involved in these issues?

Smith: No, because they don't know about it. That was my main point. They
didn't know that we were just on the verge of bankruptcy.

Riess: Traditionally, the people who have just used it as a living club
have not been involved in the running of it?

Smith: No, they have not become involved in the government or the

administration of the club at all. Unless several of them get
together and talk to the president or talk to the Board of Directors
and so on. Some of those things can be quite ticklish, quite sticky.

A long time ago, from the beginning until about this time,
there used to be what was called the Family Table. All the
residents sat at the Family Table. They were mostly the academics;
they stuck together and looked down upon the administrators.

Riess: That's who was living there mostly, women faculty members?

Smith: A lot of them were that way. Some were it's hard to tell when the
administrators took over almost entirely. Say, for instance, Miss
Coulter always sat at the Family Table, and she had all her minions,
too. Then all the other people that were there if the academics
came in from outside, naturally, their friends were academic and
they sat there. But there was great feeling I know, not because
I had any feeling, I didn't care, but a friend of mine who was partly

Smith: academic she was curator of birds in the museum of vertebrate

zoology she felt that the academics set themselves up and looked
down on the rest. So she never sat at the Family Table. Maybe
that's horrid to say; maybe I shouldn't say that.

Riess: Then the real life of the club was as a lunch club for administrative
people.

Smith: Yes. As I look back on the personnel at lunch time, ever since I
can remember, more than half have been administrative people. One
remark from a person in an agricultural extension, who isn't
necessarily a classicist, said that the administrative people were
very stupid. Why should they what did they want to have lunch with
them for? Now, that's the kind of feminine I don't know what it
is feminine attitude I cannot stand. I don't like women awfully
well, per se. I grew up with boys; either you punch the other fellow
in the nose or you get punched. But you don't make remarks like
that. That is, to my mind, the worst thing that I know about the
club. Every now and then it comes out. I have been the subject of
it, and I don't care for it.

4) Arrangements with the Men's Club

Smith: Anyway, this was the beginning, when we had the sixty dollars this
was the beginning of talking with the men's club [The Faculty Club].
I didn't see the necessity of joining with the men's club. Even by
that time, the men could eat over at our club, and we could eat
over there for a long time, and write the chits. So I can't see any
reason why even a man-crazy person should want to go over to the
men's club when they could anyway. What's the use of joining the
club? Why not leave them separate? In addition, the aims and
purposes of the two clubs are entirely different.

Riess: Was it the academic people who wanted to pull out and go to the men's
club?

Smith: Not especially. It was more the administrative people.

So there came a confrontation, and it was put to a vote, and
the Board of Directors agreed to join the men's club. Mr. Henry
Poppic, who was an attorney in the city of Berkeley, very prominent
in city council affairs, was the first honorary masculine director
he was honorary director, of the Women's Faculty Club. He told Ruth
Donnelly, and she told me, and she was very careful at repeating what
someone else had said not distortion, not her idea, but actually
what the person had said. She said that the reason that she agreed
is that Poppic told her that the joining would be on the basis of
membership fee, and that the vote would be comparable the women
would have a vote.

Smith: The next day after that meeting with that decision, I happened to
have something to take care of in regard to bills or to the
accounts or something. Anyway, I went over to the club about ten
or half past ten in the morning, and there was the manager of the
men's club, The Faculty Club, proceeding to roll up our rugs
preparatory to taking them over to The Faculty Club.

[To get an idea of those rugs] my friend and I happened to be
going to auctions, and at that time everybody was having wall-to-wall
carpets, so beautiful rugs were [being] thrown out. There was this
old-style Sarouk, which was very large these [looking at her own
carpets] are what, eight by ten, one like this. The Sarouk, the
main rug, I think was about eleven by sixteen. I don't remember the
exact measurements. But do you know, I got it for $167.

Riess: No!

Smith: It is now worth thousands of dollars. When I looked at it, it didn't
have a brack in it; it was in perfect condition. It was a lovely
rug. The old style Sarouks are not made anymore. It was the most
wonderful bargain we ever got. I forget now I was told what it's
appraised at.

I also got that little Shiraz that used to be in the library at
auction at a very reasonable price. Then there were the two rugs
that I had our rug man made me a very good price on those Hamadan
runners .

Here was this manager [Chuck Walters], whom Ruth Donnelly and
the then president of the club had recommended, rolling up the big
rug to take it over to The Faculty Club. I hit the ceiling. I
told him that I was a member of the board, that he had no right to
touch the things which were our furnishings. And in the first place,
he was doing it unauthorized. He could just roll the rug back and
just go home and stay there. He was, to me, a very obnoxious person,
particularly in taking action such as this was without authorization.
As soon as Mr. McAbee retired, things went from bad to worse.

Riess: He had been the manager of The Faculty Club?

Smith: Mr. McAbee had been the manager of The Faculty Club for years and
years .

This person Ruth Donnelly, and the then president, who is a most
intimate friend of mine, thought he would do because he'd been in the
restaurant business. He was very uncultured, though that isn't a
necessary qualification, but he was that kind of a person. The
office reflected his attitude: they were very rude when the
representative of our office went over to straighten accounts. They
in fact, got our accounts in such a mess, and did not collect. So
that was the reason that this first agreement to join was discontinued,

Smith.: We had a set of brand new dishes, and they took them over; all the
cute little teapots had their noses broken off and their covers
lost. They took over our complete set of silver, which was scattered
to the seven winds of heaven.

But the thing that I was anxious to preserve were all the
objects d'art that Albert Bender had given the club. He was most
generous. His affections were divided between Mills College and
the Women's Faculty Club. All that beautiful gold carving was given
by him, so many things were given, and I thought if they start on
the rugs, I guess they'd take those things over, which was one of
the reasons that I objected strongly, and I guess violently.

Anyway, they made such a mess of the accounts that other people
began to see it, and stopped that. I don't know how much money we
lost not being collected. There was no follow-up. That's the way
the men's club operates. I found out afterwards their uncollected
bills were really something.

5) The Vote Not to Merge

Smith: My point of view is the office, of course, the figures, the basis of
the living of the club. So came the second time [move to merge].
I guess it simmered. A lot of people kept it alive, and I'm sure
they did not know the circumstances . I would have broadcast them,
but I was not in the position to do anything then.

Then we came finally to the committee that was appointed by
Chancellor Heyns . I've forgotten who was on the committee; it
doesn't matter. The treasurer of the Women's Faculty Club at that
time campaigned violently for the merger. There were many, many
members that wanted it. They were in the secretarial range. In
fact, several of them said that they would resign from the club if
this merger didn't go through. There was great talk about building
the glass passageway between the two clubs.

It was just about accomplished. The husband of a very intimate
friend of mine, who was Lawrence's right hand man at the Radiation
Laboratory, told me that the men's club had just issued an assessment
of twenty dollars per member to have to make up the deficit in their
interest on their immense loan. It started out with $45,000 and
extended upward, I don't know at what rate.

Anyway, it's none of my business, and I did not make any effort
to find out although I could find out the amount of their loan.
But it was enough so that it was serious, and their bookkeeping was

Smith: terrible, and they didn't follow-up on unpaid bills, so that they
were in such a hole that every member of The Faculty Club was
assessed twenty dollars. My friend at the Lawrence Radiation
Laboratory was very irate about that, and he was more irate when I
told him several circumstances of what had happened. So he said,
well, why didn't I do something about it?

Well, after having been invited by an unauthorized person "to
stay home and stop trying to run the club," I had done just that.
In other words, I had already been the subject of public vilification,
which goes off my back like water. I don't care. I was a little
bit hesitant to make for any further mudholes, but I was against the
campaigning of the treasurer of the club for the merger, and I
finally decided that I would see what happened.

I got the annual report [of The Faculty Club] made by Haskins
and Sells, that audits the university account. There, on the top of
page three, among the income listed, was an item "Women's Faculty
Club, $898" (or $848, I don't remember which). (This sum, by the way,
was the exact amount which The Faculty Club was short in meeting
their interest on their loan. And this was in spite of the general
assessment of twenty dollars levied on all its members.)

I can remember the three questions which immediately arose in my
mind on seeing this entry: first, was this a case of barefaced
effrontery in including OUR money without our authority? second, or
had some officer of the club given permission to use this sum although
no formal agreement of the merger had been signed? and third, by
using a flat sum, such as this, all promised consideration of
membership fees, etc. no longer existed. Also, I could not see why
such a well known firm as Haskins and Sells would accept as revenue
an amount from a separate organization without checking the authori
zation for it.

I considered this very seriously and decided that in spite of
probable unhappy consequences I should no longer stay aloof. With
permission from the president of our cJub, Peg Uridge, I decided to
issue a statement of facts so that the members might see the merger
from a more practical viewpoint. I titled the letter "A Financial
Warning."* I pointed out that if the merger went into effect, our
club would be open to arbitrary assessment at any time; that we would
lose all control over our own money, our two donations ($25,000 from
Mrs. Mel and $2,500 from Miss Mabel Coulter); we would not only lose
our identity but lose control over all our accounts and probably lose
our most desirable furnishings as well. The incident of taking our
rugs in the first attempt at merging showed very plainly what would
happen.

*Appended

Smith: I had this letter xeroxed and, again with permission, took advantage
of the campus mail. The postage on the non-campus addresses was paid
by me personally.

At a general meeting of the club before voting on the merger I
stated the facts as I saw them. As an aside, I should like to say
that I cleared the treasurer of giving any possible authorization for
use of our funds. The surprise with which she protested my calling
attention to the $898 inclusion of our funds showed that the
realization of what the report indicated hadn't even percolated.

I ended my talk with the feeling that I had spread out all the
facts in a plain and clear fashion so that the members could consider
the merger with the knowledge of what had happened in the past and
what could and would happen in the future. Doris White, a member of
the Board of Directors at the time, tape-recorded the meeting, so
that any point in question can be verified.

As a result of the decision NOT to merge, fifteen members
resigned as threatened.

That was that. The rest of the members, we went on with new
vigor. Mrs. Uridge had gotten Mrs. Rockwell for a manager. We had
just gone back to the happy, friendly feeling that the club was
started with. And it's in wonderful financial condition.

Riess : Now, why is it in actually "wonderful" financial condition? I can

see how you reversed a trend that had left you with sixty dollars at
one time.

Smith: The club was renovated with money to make it earthquake proof you

know, the earthquake money that was spread all over the campus. And
we got a beautiful donation from a Mrs. Mel, Cora Mel. She was an
old Berkeley resident. She was very interested musically. Every
concert I went to, we always saw Mrs. Mel.

She gave $25,000 for improvements, special things to make the
rooms more livable. They've at last come to appreciate oriental rugs,
You see, a daughter of one of the first professors of agriculture,
Mr. Hilgard, Alice Rose Hilgard, left all of her oriental rugs to
the club. They were just stuck in the closet. But being a hobby,
why, I got other people interested, and now I think the club looks
the way it should, and the friendly atmosphere is wonderful, and
the food is good. Mrs. Rockwell had the foresight to grab the cook
up at Cowell Hospital. When the cook at Cowell resigned, Mrs.
Rockwell immediately said how desirable we were.

6) The Club as a Forum

Riess: As I read histories of the club over the years, I saw that periodically
there would be an effort to make the club a place where women's issues
would be discussed.

Smith: Yes. Well, that was Miss Stebbins' original thing to start out: to
give women academic recognition. And also to make it a home for the
foreign scholars who come over to this country. I have a friend who
is at the University of Upsala, and she is Finnish. She has had
three Guggenheim fellowships. She stayed at the club. Many people
that come over stay at the club, all the people that get foreign
grants.

Riess: I noticed that. I noticed that one of the committees I think it was
in the early sixties was called the Professional Advancement
Committee.

Smith: Yes. Anna Espenshade was chairman, I think.
Riess: Can you say anything about that?

Smith: Well, it is rumored that at a meeting of the Academic Senate ages
and ages ago one member said in plain English, out loud, that they
didn't want women. They would prefer men.

Riess: The Professional Advancement Committee seemed to be looking into

women's salaries; they wanted to know whether this year we had more
women than we had last year. Yet, at the same time, the tone was
that even if we found out, we have no power to recommend anyway.

Smith: Yes. Or to be listened to. And there had been, over the years, I

think three different committees for advancement of women in academic
fields. Every one of them has petered out just like that.

I should think not until this last I don't knov who appointed
this last one, whether it was Saxon or whether it was Heyman. But
it's a committee of about five years this last one is the only one
in my fifty years of knowledge that has published a certain definite
conclusion.

Riess: It's probably because they were required by the government, in order
to get money, to come up with the information.

Smith: That could be, that could very well be.

Riess : How about having an academic atmosphere insofar as having women talk
about research they were doing? Was there an effort to have evening
talks that were educational, or lunchtime talks in those days?

Smith: I don't think they would draw very much. Marian Diamond, who was
very enterprising, furnished slides of some of her research. The
audience was very small. On the contrary, a long time ago, when
Mary Ann Johnson was president, and I had something to do with the
ceremonies, we had Hope Gladding give slides of the English country
houses. And the place was packed! So I don't know whether that
would attract people now or not.

Riess: Do you have the feeling that the Men's Faculty Club is really a
lively institution itself?

Smith: I am in no position to say anything, because all the men I knew in
The Faculty Club are not there anymore.

Riess : Do you think it had a real heyday?

Smith: Yes. Its opinions held an important place on the campus. I don't

think the measure of the present faculty is anywhere near what it was
with all of the people that we used to have.

Riess: You mean, the measure of active members?
Smith: Yes.

Riess: That's exactly what I was trying to find out: as a body, whether it
had an opinion that was listened to.

Smith: I shouldn't express any opinion, because I'm not on the campus anymore;
I've avoided all campus gossip.

Riess: I'm talking about when you were.

Smith: Yes. When I was, people like [George D. ] Louderback, and what was
the chemistry man?

Riess: Lewis?

Smith: Yes, old G.N. Lewis, and so on. All my friends [Joel] Hildebrand

and lots of other people of the same caliber, they really had a place.

Riess: That reminds me to ask you whether the Women's Faculty Club was

particularly buzzing during the loyalty oath years. Around those
issues, what happened at the club?

Smith: Nothing much.

Riess: The club doesn't take stands?

Smith: No.

Riess: As a Board of Directors, you don't take a stand?
Smith: No.

Riess: Have there ever been Boards of Directors that have tended to be more
political?

Smith: No, I don't think so. I think any Board of Directors at that club is
decidedly a-political. I'm a-political.

Riess: Okay. Well, I think we've done a good job.

Smith: To me, that was a rather interesting chronology.

Riess: Very. And particularly since it's such a happy outcome.

Smith: Yes. Usually [pause] I wouldn't wish the personal element that I
say what happened to me or what 1^ did, emphasized, please.

Riess: I certainly understand.

Smith: When I was doing this, I also reviewed the political situation of the
university.

Riess: You mean when you were preparing this?

Smith: Yes. I was thinking about the way in which the university had

proceeded, say, from six campuses to eight when I left, nine now,
and the presidents. It was really very interesting.

I also prepared a clear account of the history of procedures at
the university, which I want to give to you. [deposited in University
Archives, The Bancroft Library.]

7) Personal Background and Education

Riess: Despite your wish to omit the personal pronoun, "I," would you tell
us where you were born, and educated?

Smith: I was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, of the famous Smiths.

There, if you go to Northampton, every one out of four or five people
is a Smith.

Riess: And were you really from a famous Smith?

Smith:

Riess ;
Smith:

Riess :
Smith:

Riess :
Smith:
Riess ;
Smith:

Well, if you want to call Aunt Sophia famous, I suppose yes. We
were the poor church mouse of the family. Aunt Sophia founded
Smith College out of pique, because Andrew Vassar had established
Vassar at Poughkeepsie. So she was very put out. She insisted that
he was "no thing but a beer merchant." I always thought that that was
simply scandal or spite at him. But it wasn't, he actually did
manufacture beer in puritan New England, and that was the lowest thing
you could do, so of course he was looked down on.

Aunt Sophia was a very vain old lady, deaf as a post. She
couldn't hear what was said, she didn f t read lips, and she wouldn't
use her hearing aid, so she said the most malapropos things,
thinking that she was right up to date. As a very small child I can
still remember the members of the family making fun of all her
malapropos remarks. If you want to know the date, it was December
18, 1886.

I'd say that was a very, very auspicious beginning.

I think if it weren't for the fact that I have to wear my glasses
all the time, I'd still be skiing yet. I'm a ski maniac!

Did you go to private schools?

No, I went to public schools. They had a very fine high school in
Springfield, Massachusetts. When I see some of the stuff that the
kids have now in college, why, that's what I had in high school!

I went to Mount Holyoke College. My paternal grandfather's
cousin was Sophia Smith. My maternal grandfather's second cousin was
Mary Lyon, who founded Mount Holyoke. I went to Mount Holyoke for
two reasons: my mother had gone there, and also it was very much
cheaper. My father came to [financial] grief in my college career.
I was having a wonderful time. I was raked out of college in the
middle of my junior year. So I have no B.A. whatsoever.

Are you an oldest child?

Yes. I have two sisters. They were both born in Northampton.

When you were pulled out of college, you went to work?

No, I went to what is now a state university, and received a teacher's
certificate, and squabbled with keeping ahead of the forty little
devils out in front. I had a country school, which was very
interesting. Then, when I was studying music, I substituted in
Berkeley and in Oakland, but Berkeley mainly, and I filled out a term
for quite a period for one of the toughest schools in Oakland. They
had run a man out, so I came up against them the first day in there.
But I pulled no punches, and I said [shouts], "Hey there, what do you
mean by that?" That was the way to talk to them. I ended being very
popular.

Riess : Why were you out here?

Smith: My father saw a business opportunity out here, some kind of
commission, and came out here and it was very successful.

I think that everyone who comes direct from the East out here
finds it oh, so crude, and they just hate it. I just detested the
courses that I had in education.

I substituted, as I say, and I finished out nearly half a year
in that tough school. That gave me something wherewith to eat.
Then I did music for about, oh, maybe six or ten years, somewhere
around there.

Riess: Where were you studying music?

Smith: With a symphony man over in San Francisco.

Riess: You were studying an instrument?

Smith: Yes, cello. It's the most beautiful instrument in the world.

Riess: Were you intending to be a concert cellist?

Smith: No, 1 did a great deal of orchestra work, and string quartets. I
played wherever I could rake in any money.

Riess: Any of the others go on to greater glory?

Smith: Yes, I think the violinist pursued it, but I don't know what she did
afterwards, when we broke up. The piano player was a mature person
who had played with the San Jose Symphony. So she had already had
her glory. Music became very dull at that time, and the only thing
that I could get was a vaudeville engagement, and it didn't appeal
to me very much.

I heard that there was a vacancy at the university here, in
extension, so I applied. That position was filled, but the person
in charge told me that the accounting department was looking for
someone. I had taken a great deal of math in college to avoid
physics and chemistry. (Only when I made my darkroom did I wish
that I'd had physics and chemistry!) So I came up to the university,
and I was going to stay six months, because I would not go home my
family lived in Chico and you have to eat. I've discovered that
seven glasses of water will keep you from being hungry a half an
hour, [laughs] My complexion was never better! [laughs]

Riess: Where were you living?

Smith: On Bancroft Way, in one of the houses that has long since been torn
down.

8) Thirty-six Years at the University

Riess: You got a job in accounting at the University.
Smith: Yes. I began thirty-six and a half years of service.

The university was at that time making claims, state claims for
reimbursement. Then I got put in charge of the salary rolls, and
the payroll, and the keeping of the budget for the different accounts
for the different departments.

At that time there were only six stations. There was Berkeley
you see, Los Angeles wasn't Davis, Riverside, those were the three
big ones. Then there was La Jolla, which was set up by Ellen Scripps.
La Jolla, Mount Hamilton, and one more.

Riess: Who were you working for when you were working in the accounting
office?

Smith: The accountant at that time was Mr. Henry Harshaw Benedict. He had
a mania, in which I was trained, and have since taken on, that
everything you put out must be dated, and it must be signed, and it
must have a clear title, three things that are absolutely vital to
anything you do.

Riess: When you started out, were you just one of the girls, or did you
occupy a position of some importance?

Smith: At that time it wasn't of particular importance, but I had quite an
interview with the accountant. He thought with the amount of
mathematics that I had had that he would best place me in the making
of these state claims, submitting of these state claims. Then from
that, it naturally led to the person who got up the salary roll, as
we called it at that time. She got married, so I just naturally fell
into that .

I came maybe ten days or two weeks after Mr. [Robert Gordon]
Sproul was first appointed assistant comptroller. Then he was
appointed comptroller, and I had a great deal to do with him. When
he became president, he took two people: one was Miss [Agnes] Robb,
and the other one was me, from the accounting department to the
president's office, where I stayed for some thirty years.

After that time, the IBM was just beginning to take over account
ing. I was beguiled by the promise of a card punch all my own, and a
machine that runs it, a recording machine, all my own. So I got a
staff of unexcelled people, and proceeded to do that. The biggest
service I think that I rendered the University in all those years of
service was the putting of the budget on the IBM after the IBM
specialist said it couldn't be done. I knew it could be done. It
took me about three months of overtime.

Smith: Before that, all the statistics on what we'd call the exchange

universities, Harvard and Cornell and Michigan and Minnesota and
Columbia and Chicago, statistics on salary, teaching load, we would
grind it out on one of the Marchand calculators. I could see that
if we put the budget on the IBM, it would be nothing but duck soup
to just run the cards through.

The accountant [Olaf Lundberg] didn't include me in the interview
with the IBM specialist. He was sure that he knew all the work, so
it wasn't necessary at all. Well, the IBM people said there were
just too many exceptions, it just couldn't be done, but I went to
Lundberg and I said, "What about my doing it on my own, just to prove
it?" He said, if I could, go ahead. So I took the cards and I
marked them myself, and I devised a system for the exceptions, which
you can always deal with, and there we are.

Riess: Was it unusual to have a woman in the position that you occupied?

Smith: Yes.

Riess: And you had to do an awful lot of asserting yourself over the years.

Smith: Quite a bit. And if you assert yourself too much, it's bad. If you
don't assert yourself, you'll be nowhere, you'll be trampled on.
So to steer a diplomatic career is quite something. Let me say that
I think the very best way to turn a reasonable, ordinary person and
to make them very tough is to be a woman in a man's job. You have
to be twice as good; you work ten times as hard; you have to be
terribly conscientious, and maybe you'll get half of what the men
will get for a mediocre job.

Well, after I got budget off my neck, I overheard two people
talking and I guess I had said that maybe they should use up their
pencil ends, or something like that. But they were discussing me,
and the fiat that I had set forth. One of them said, "Well, I'm not
going in there to argue with that tough old bird." (But that's what
you had to be.) I thought for quite a while; they weren't going
away, so I might as well face it. I went out, and said, "Well, what
have you got against a tough old bird?" I put it to them what they
would have done under the circumstances, and we were the best of
friends ever after.

You know, all things that you've done in the past build up to
present crises that you may meet. Everything that I've done like
working in the printing shop gave me a knowledge of the process in
printing the budget. Dealing with the professors, the chairmen of
the departments and so on, gave me an insight about dealing with the
administrators of our retirement fund.

9) Interests in Printing, Writing, and Skiing

Riess: At what time in your history were you working in the printing shop?

Smith: That was several years Before I began either my writing career or my
music career. I guess it was after I decided I wasn't cut out for a
reporter.

Riess: Was that after you decided you weren't cut out to be a teacher?

Smith: Yes, I decided it was far too strenuous. I could make them learn,
but it took too much out of me.

Riess: Then where were you a reporter?

Smith: On the Sacramento Bee. Then I went up to Seattle to work on the

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. But I didn't like being a reporter for
that. Then I came upon this beautiful printing shop that printed
scientific treatises. Oh, it was the most interesting thing, I
hated to give it up, but I wanted to see some of the rest of my life.

Riess: You mean, the work is so close?

Smith: No, it was the glare on the proof paper. Proof paper is a cheap

grade of paper that is highly glazed to take the ink, very easy to
print on. It was the glare of the light on that that did not agree
with me.

Riess: You made a lot of big changes in your life. May I ask if there were
any men in your life at that point?

Smith: Oh, no. I was just writing.
Riess: You just didn't have time for them?

Smith: Well, I nearly got married to go to Alaska with a ranger. But I
decided no, I don't want that.

Riess: When did you say you started skiing?

Smith: When I began skiing? Well, I'm crazy about mountains, and that kind
of life.

When I lived in the Cascades, when I was depending on the
magazines for my sustenance, it was necessary to go down to the mine
and get provisions, and it was seven or nine miles down, and eleven
to fifteen back, depending. So we went down on skis. My father had

Smith: given me his big Colt .44 Smith and Wesson, it was. I wore it

under my coat. If one of the mine men started to get fresh, all I
did was just put my hand in my pocket, and that brought out the butt
of the big .44. Nobody ever tackled me after that, [laughter]

Where I was first skiing was with a bunch of friends in Yosemite,
either over Christmas or New Year's, and one of the fellows borrowed
the ranger's skis. They, of course, had bindings. We went up to
skate, not to ski, but he got these, and I discovered that you could
steer them!

Later I ran into Joel Hildebrand, being in the Sierra Club, and
I have been a lost soul ever since. I've skied for thirty-five years,
and I've had five accidents, every one of them my own fault. One
time, my last one, I was showing off. There were a bunch of fellows
down there, and of course I was showing what a big skier I was. I
hit soft snow, and not having glasses on if I'd had glasses on, I
would have known what to do but not having glasses on, if you don't
prepare for it, it's fatal. That was my last broken leg. I've had
three broken legs. And I'd rather have any number of broken legs
or broken arms or anything, rather than anything happen to your
ribs. Your ribs are awful. I've had accidents to my ribs, on dry
land, terra firma, not on skiing, and you can't take a deep breath,
you mustn't cough, and you certainly cannot sneeze without the most
extreme agony.

Riess: Were you doing your skiing with a Sierra Club group?

Smith: No, although I'm a life member. But all my friends are Sierra Club,
and I want to absolutely get away from people; and the mountains
are the best place to do it. So I've gone on twenty pack trips. I
can handle three mules all by myself, and rope them and pack them.

Riess : You mean you packed into high country?

Smith: Yes, I like the very high country, the Whitney country. We went in

a great many times from Mineral King. And as fond as I am of skiing,
I did everything I could to help it not be made one of Walt Disney's
ski things.

Riess: Well, that introduces you beautifully, a brief but sensational

account! [Miss Smith, editing the manuscript, called this section
"unwontedly garrulous," but despite her objections, it is included.
SBR]

Smith: Yes, I think quite thoroughly. I have an awful temper, which I have
at last learned to control. And I like to live in peace and harmony.

Transcriber: Matt Schneider
Final Typist: Nicole Bouche

MARGARET MURDOCK

TABLE OF CONTENTS Margaret Murdock

1) The Beginnings 29

2) The Building 31

3) Club Activities, Early 32

4) Furnishings 34

5) Residents and the Dining Service 36

6) The Issue of Merger 38

7) Personal History 40

8) Dean Stebbins; The Mothers and Daughters 43

9) Credentials Counsellor 46

10) Comments on Club Membership 48

11) Gifts and Friends 53

12) Loyalty Oath, and War 56

13) Margaret Murdock, and Music 58

14) The Parties 60

Margaret Murdock, Administrative Assistant Department of
Education, Office Manager, Women's Faculty Club, and
Chimesmis tress. Plaque is inscribed: "This clavier is
dedicated to Margaret E. Murdock, Campanile Bell Player
since 1923."

Photographed in 1980

Margaret Murdock

Interview 1: August 26, 1981

Interviewed at Miss Murdock 's home

1) The Beginnings

Riess: When did you become a member of the Women's Faculty Club, and what
was your position on campus?

Murdock: I worked in the office of the dean of women, who was Lucy Ward

Stebbins, and I was aware of the club even before I became a member.
The first members were all academic faculty people, including
Miss Stebbins and Dr. Jessica Peixotto and Agnes Fay Morgan, and
Barbara Armstrong of law, and Miss Coulter of the library. It was
a whole group of people with academic status. It was not until
after the club was incorporated by those people that they invited
some of the administrative people to become members. I was in
that group of staff people who were next to the founders in status
of membership.

Riess: Some administrative people were invited, but others weren't?

Murdock: They did take the upper levels, what would be the administrative
assistants rather than the clerks and typists. And of course, at
that time, it was for women. Now the members include quite a few
men, just as the men's club has women members, which would have been
quite impossible at that time. In fact, there wouldn't have been a
Women's Faculty Club if the men had been a little more cordial to
even opening the hospitality of their clubhouse to women.

Riess: Josephine Miles said that that group of women were the bluestockings.
What was your sense of those early faculty women?

Murdock: Dr. Peixotto was one of the early Ph.D. 's from this campus, a very
brilliant economist. In those days there wasn't a Department of
Social Welfare, and sociology as such was included in economics,
because economics is the foundation for sociology in a sense.
Dr. Peixotto and Lucy Stebbins, who graduated from Radcliffe and was
a social worker in New England before she was invited to come to be
assistant to the dean of women and shortly after that the dean, were
typical of that scholarly group of early professors on the campus.

Murdock: Dr. Agnes Fay Morgan was probably the most distinguished

academically, because while she was attached to what was called
home economics at that time, she was a chemist and a nutritionist
of distinction. Some of the other members, as Josephine told you,
seemed to be of the bluestocking class.

Perhaps World War I had something to do with the fact that
women had status not in all departments: history and English,
both with the British tradition, were willing to give them graduate
work and let them get their doctor's degrees, but not give them
campus positions. But economics had several, and of course the
language departments had some. Mathematics had some excellent women
scholars, including Sophie Levy and Miss Pauline Sperry. Miss Tabor
was in German. The Women's Faculty Club profited by the fact that
the Sperry-Tabor pair were economists of sorts, too; they handled
the finances that were done most successfully, and were responsible
for the short time before our club was all ours and the mortgage
cleared. So we were fortunate to have that group of scholars.
The Library School and the University Library provided the club with
several others: Miss Coulter and her sister and Miss Nella Martin
and several others were original members.

Riess: What does that expression, bluestocking, mean?

Murdock: That's a British term for a woman who was scholarly. I don't know
why the stockings were blue, but it's an expression for people that
were academically renowned, but not necessarily socially acceptable
because of it. At any rate, it's a good term for a general
description of the founders.

Riess: Why did they need to band together?

Murdock: I think they were friendly because of their scholarly interests.

I think in a sense, the building of the clubhouse was a factor due
to their campus position of second-class citizens, as it were. The
Faculty Club was definitely for men; the women were allowed to use
one of the corner dinner rooms, the little north dining room, and
the so-called powder room, where the student waitresses left all
their books and paraphernalia. It was not a gracious place to
entertain visiting faculty women. I think that they felt that they
wanted their own dignity and their own campus status, and a clubhouse
of their own would accomplish that.

Riess: And a club, per se, was a more important thing then, I gather.

Murdock: I think probably so. About the same time, the College Women's Club
and the Women's City Club in Berkeley all were founded. Several of
the clubs changed and have become co-educational. Even the Women's
Faculty Club is somewhat so. But at least it hasn't ever folded up,
and has represented the fact that women can be good business managers
and maintain something of that sort.

Rless: What I have gathered is that the first thing they [founders] did was

create The Building Committee, and I'm wondering what that committee's
relationship was to the club as it developed simultaneously. Was
the committee always the seat of power? Or did it answer to the
board?

Murdock: There was a board of directors, and the Building Committee was part
of it. For instance, when Miss [Hope] Gladding was doing the
furnishing, she'd go to the Building Committee for funds for
purchasing. But the whole board got practically the same people to
handle a mixture of things. I'd say that of course, as anybody
would agree, Lucy Stebbins was the founder of the founders, and
would come through anonymously with financial support when needed.

Riess : From her own resources?
Murdock: Yes.

2) The Building

Riess: Do you remember anything of building the club, and of John Galen
Howard?

Murdock: Yes, I do, because my first job on the campus, as I said, was in the
dean of women's office, so I was in on the early days of the
planning and the selecting of the architect, and the ideas of
grandeur that they had, which would have included a fireplace in
every room, with a very fancy concrete structure. I was in Miss
Stebbins 1 office when the Building Committee members, Dr. Morgan
and Miss Coulter among others, came back from the city. The lowest
bid had been three times as much as they expected to have to pay for
the building. [brief tape interruption]

Rless: You said that the lowest bid came in three times what they expected
to pay. Were there other arcnitects consulted?

Murdock: I don't know who the other competitors were, but they wanted to

have Mr. Howard do it. Actually, I'm wrong, it wasn't a competition.
It was the bids for the cost of building the club. But we had
delusions of grandeur, the club did, and had to change a little bit-
pull in our horns!

Riess: The original drawings appeared to be of a stucco-clad building.

Murdock: I have no regrets; I think the shingles are attractive. And I

think Howard needs to be appreciated on the range of things that
he could adapt to. It was nice to know that while buildings like
the more classical ones on the campus represented his Beaux Arts
scholarship, that he could make a lovely shingled building that's
worn so well and has been so efficient and functional.

Riess: Yes, that's a good point. So then finally

Murdock: Finally they had to give up the tiled roof and stucco and have the

shingled building, which is much more characteristic of a California
structure.

Riess: I wonder if Julia Morgan was in the running for architect.

Murdock: I don't think so. I'm surprised she wasn't, because, of course,
she did beautiful buildings, and was a woman, and it would have
seemed more logical to have had her. In fact, some people thought
that she did do the building.* Howard was the university architect,
and it was probably the proper thing to maybe it was required, I'm
not sure about that. But at any rate, it didn't occur to me that
that was a choice. It could have been, I suppose.

3) Club Activities, Early

Riess:

Murdock:

What were those early days of the club like?
club?

What did you do as a

If you have access to the archives, if they haven't disappeared, you
ought to find little notices which probably Josephine Smith printed,
of a good many of the little social parties. Not only Christmas
parties, but ones during the year in which we would have a costume
party, or a meeting for new members, or our annual meeting. They
never were social to the extent that other women's clubs were
because they were all busy, professional people, and they didn't
join it just to play bridge and talk about children and houses.

Riess: Were there speakers that would come to the meetings?

*There is correspondence in the WFC files with Julia Morgan, who
consulted with the club on the advisability of earthquake insurance
in 1927. [SBR]

Murdock: We'd have speakers at meetings. We didn't have them as they now
have occasionally "Lunch and Learns," but we did have occasional
speakers. There was a smaller group of what you might say the
bluestockings that had their more scholarly gatherings. We called
them the "Learned Ladies."

But the club was not entirely social, as many clubs are. It
didn't keep going because people did play bridge; it kept going
because it housed visitors. It did give and always has given good
food, well served, which appealed to the membership. And a good
many faculty people, of course, even with their own homes, liked to
have dinner out. And the lunch was always popular.

Actually, the club membership as a whole partially supported
the residents because they lived there quite frugally. I don't
think what they paid in rent and paid for their meals really covered
their total expenses adequately, so some of the people who didn't
use the club regularly helped contribute through their memberships.

Riess: Off and on in those early years, were there attempts made to do more
reading of scholarly papers among the women, and considering of
the role of women?

Murdock: The "Learned Ladies" read papers. But they were not belligerently
feminist in that sense. The academic ones were pretty well
established and not feeling put out by lack of recognition. And
the administrators at that time actually there was a group of them
that behind the scenes were the stable staff of the faculty. Each
division, like the graduate division or the extension, the different
departments, had some woman who really, behind the scenes, managed
things. I guess probably it's still true in a good many departments.
I don't think that any of them felt put upon or abused. They had
their status; the deans could come and go, but the administrative
assistants, or secretaries as they were called then, kept a certain
amount of stability with the structure of the administration.

Riess: That's right. Often they have a lot of power.

Murdock: Yes, it was behind-the-scenes power that they had. I guess they
were aware of it and felt the responsibility of their positions.

Riess: Then, for those people, was it a place where they could come together
to talk about the business of their on-campus jobs, for instance?

Murdock: It could be. I don't know that they did particularly. Some, like
Josephine Smith, liked to come and would hide herself behind a
magazine because it was a place for peace and quiet where she
wouldn't be disturbed by talking shop. So it was understood that
if you wanted to get away from shop at noontime, that was your
privilege.

Rless: Did the academics automatically join?

Murdock:

Riess :

Murdock:

No, there are always some women on the campus who saw no need for
the club and didn't join. It wasn't held against them. You joined
if you wanted to. And if you were invited and didn't join, that
was your privilege.

I wonder if that represents a point of view of seeing no real need
for the club.

I think probably so. There might have been some that would have
joined if it were men and women, but saw no particular need for a
separate women's club. I think, as a whole, the academic women on
the campus supported the club, but there were always some that
didn't choose to and that was their perogative.

4) Furnishings

Riess: I got us off the subject, and I think it would be a great mistake if

you didn't say something for the record about the furnishing of the

club and Hope Cladding's role. So let's get back to the point where
we have a clubhouse built.

Murdock: The clubhouse was finished just about the right time to take the
refugees from the Berkeley fire. It was in '23 that the club
opened, in September, so it needed to be furnished pretty much in a
hurry. Hope Gladding, as a member of the home economics department,
as it was then called, was asked to select furnishings, but without
very adequate funds for it. So she had to ask the board for money
for bureaus for the bedrooms. She designed the tables and chairs
for the dining room and selected the living room furniture, which
now includes pieces that were gifts. [The oak dining room tables,
with pedestal bases, were still there in 1982, although refinished
to a lighter color. SBR]

Many of the real treasures of the early days were the ones that
she bought from shops that had oriental material that was available,
and wouldn't be available now they really brought in treasures
from the Orient. The club profited by the fact that at that time
things like the collapsible desk in the library and one of the
chests in the living room were just available in antique shops, and
she picked them.

Riess: In Chinatown?

Murdock: No, most of the things that she bought were from Mrs. Churchill and
Mrs. Sanderson, who had shops in Berkeley, who imported oriental
things .

Riess: I've heard the name Imogen Sanderson.

Murdock: Yes, right.

Riess: And Churchill?

Murdock: Also was somebody that had oriental things.

But many of the things she designed or had made. The little
bureaus that we had came from Gorman's [Berkeley unfinished furniture
store] , and just were painted bright colors to look cheerful and
embellish the bedrooms.

Riess: Gorman's is an institution!

Murdock: Gorman's is an institution that for a long time has contributed its
share of equipment.

Riess: I haven't seen the sleigh-beds.

Murdock: They were very pretty. Sleigh-beds have curved ends and are graceful,
and they were very comfortable. But the very fact that they had
these curved ends made them not as sturdy as standard beds. And
they were outsized [undersized] so that you couldn't get new
mattresses for them. So little by little they got replaced. But
I'm sure some of them are floating around, because some of the people
that loved them bought them when the club was disposing of them. I
think there may be a couple of them still around. I rather think
the last time I looked in the upstairs lounge there was a sleigh-bed
there.

Riess: After John Galen Howard designed the building, did he come back and
spend time?

Murdock: Not particularly. I mean, I think he was pleased with the club. I
suppose he was disappointed that the original plans couldn't be
carried out, but after all, while his reputation was for more solid
marble and granite, and later concrete, I think that he did very
well with what he had to.

Riess: There was a comment that the Spanish-style interior, white walls,
dark trim, and wrought iron, was "as if they had been recommended
by some banker as a condition for a collateral loan."

Murdock: I can't answer that, what banker could have been involved in that.
Riess: Or whether that was literally true.

Murdock: I think that may be a little imaginative. I could ask Hope, but

I don't think she'd be quite sure about that. She wasn't in on the
original financing of the club, but was there in time enough
to do a good deal of the furnishing. It was the style at that time,
and you didn't have to match your outside and your inside entirely.

Riess: Speaking of the style inside, I wanted to find out from you about
the room people were taken to see because it had [laughing] the
red bed?

Murdock: The early furniture was just the unpainted variety, and I think it
was Hope Gladding who had an eye for color and thought it would be
nice to have rooms with different atmospheres. I had a green room,
but there were pale blue ones, and of course there was a red one.
Sometimes it went with whatever rug happened to be there, but it was
never a dull similarity of sort of boarding house style. They all
had a little spirit to them.

5) Residents and the Dining Service

Murdock: The club over its years of course, one of its excellent functions
was housing and caring for visiting scholars. We had wonderful
people living in the club in my days of residence who were on the
faculty of Vassar, of Wellesley, or other colleges, who had
sabbaticals and came out and appreciated the club, as well as
Berkeley, and gave it, you might say, a somewhat international
reputation.

The early days had quite a few campus people that were more or
less permanent residents. Then they made a regulation that people
who retired say at the age of sixty-five couldn't remain at the
club: they didn't want it to become an old ladies home. There was
a chance that people who retired would want to stay in the clubs
indefinitely. There were a couple of old boys that did at The
Faculty Club.

It wasn't retroactive, so we did have two or three people who
continued on at the club after their retirement. But it was
supposed to be as a residence for people actively connected with the
university or visiting the university. The regulation was that
after people reached sixty-five or so, they could remain there only
for a couple of years; they didn't want to have them on into their
seventies, and at that time, I think Miss [May] Dornin and Lucille
Czarnowski were about the only residents that would fit into the
pattern of perpetuity. It was all right in that case because they
had been there before the rule was made, but May didn't really want
to, and is very comfortably off over at the Sequoias [retirement
apartments in San Francisco], but the idea was that she didn't have
to go. She could have stayed on indefinitely.

Murdock:

Riess :
Murdock:
Riess :
Murdock:

Riess:

Murdock;

Riess:
Murdock;

Now, it's even more a transient entity, because it can fill up
pretty well with visiting people, and not too many Berkeley people
want to live in a residence place of that sort. The people that
come quite a few faculty stayed there while they were looking for
homes and getting established, and then moved to their own domiciles
and continued their active interest in the club, but as, you might
say, non-resident members.

Was that stimulating, to have the transients?
Oh, very definitely so!
They really interacted?

They interacted, and I think the club breakfast table, which had
about twenty people, was always a discussion group. That included,
of course, visitors and residents, and the local people, and people
with a great many different points of view: scholars in the science
field, and librarians, and people in the arts. So it was always
a nice melting pot.

In all those years between 1923, let's say, and 1967, was the club
conflict-free?

I would say so, yes. I feel like a thirty-third degree Mason
because, having been in Miss Stebbins's office before the club
started, and having been a resident, and having been an officer one
time and another on boards and committees, and then having worked
in the club office for quite a period after I retired from my
campus job, I sort of feel as though I've watched the club over a
fairly long period. Though I would say that my active participation
perhaps didn't include being in the heart of the merger concern.

During what period were you a resident?

From '23 until '40. I lived in the clubhouse from almost its start
until I came to share Miss Cladding's house. So 1 did watch it from
the inside.

Thac is interesting,
board?

The club breakfast table was one large groaning

I think it sometimes groaned if they got into too heavy arguments.
People could make breakfast upstairs. Each floor had a little gas
stove and the equipment with which people could have a cup of coffee
and a piece of toast. But most of the residents had their breakfasts
downstairs. Now, breakfast is included in being there, which is to
discourage them using upstairs, I guess.

Riess:

When you said that the residents were somewhat supported by the
club, I didn't realize you were speaking from a resident's point of
view.

Murdock: I felt that they did more for us than we did for them.

The residents didn't always dine at the club. One of the
reasons that finally the three meals deal was abandoned was that
in my days in the office, we had the dinners going, but you didn't
know whether you were going to have five or fifty in the dining
room. And union help is costly. By the time you have your cook
and your salad girl and your second cook and a eight-hour shift so
that they wouldn't be there for breakfast through dinner, the
expense of a meal was just unreasonable. You couldn't charge people
enough to pay for that amount of help without any assurance that
you were going to have a given number of people eating there. Since
the house never had more than two dozen residents I mean, there
were less than twenty-four rooms even if everybody there ate
dinner, you still have to count on the town's members to support
the dining room. And it never really worked to that extent.

Riess: So the dinner-dining service then
Murdock: had to fold up.*

6) The Issue of Merger

Riess: When were you in the office? I don't think I have those dates down.

Murdock: I don't know. In the fifties and early sixties, because it was

after I had retired and before the last chapters of the merger. I
was still there when they were working on that, and the book of
pictures was being provided. But my closer association with the
office was probably in the forties and fifties, after I'd moved up
here with Hope, and wasn't living at the club, but was still
working in the office and keeping in touch with things that way.

Riess: That was not a volunteer position?

Murdock: No. All the earlier being on the board were volunteer, but when I
was in the office, it was as office manager, and not a large salary,
but at least sometimes half-time pay for full-time work.

*"[The WFC stopped serving dinners Nov. 1, 1971, and stopped serving
lunches Jan. 3, 1972. SBR]

39.

Riess: In your long association with the club, before 1967, was a

cooperative arrangement with The Faculty Club ever a point of
discussion in those years?

Murdock: Over the years, I think it wasn't. I think that they worked

mutually in a friendly manner, but there wasn't any thought of
swallowing the women's club and turning the space into a parking
lot. It was just two clubs, and they each had their function, and
people could interchange meals, so that the faculty wives, the
ladies, could always use the club, sign chits by way of the men's
club. Just as the women used the men's club for dinner and for
parties and things. The exchange of club chits was on a fairly
even basis in the days when I was in the office. We paid them as
much as they paid us back and forth on the billings.

Riess: But their food reputation was poor compared to yours, wasn't it?

Murdock: Yes. But it still was a popular place to take your friends and to
have access to.

Riess: The Haas family gift was to be contingent on agreeing to consolidate
management operations. Now, what is that referring to?

Murdock: I'm sure that was one of the items of the proposed merger, I think,
of having the dining rooms combined, which didn't really work. It
was just about the time that I was leaving the office that they
were really about to take over, so I got out just in time, I think,
not to be

Riess: Crushed.

Murdock: Yes, crushed in that particular machine.

I think that we have profited in our recent regeneration from
some of those campus funds. But again, I'm not up on the financial
benefit that might have come from campus regulations on bringing
things up to date for handicapped people and such, and for the funds
provided for that, which I think is the case, that the elevator,
the ramp, were ones that were necessitated in a public building, but
didn't fall financially on the club members.

Riess: That's an interesting point, a good incentive, certainly, How about
the Mel gift? I'm interested that Mel is Florence Nachtrieb Mel.

Murdock: Yes, she was Barbara's sister, and she was very generous in her

will to the club. She was one of the associate members because of
her various activities. So she wasn't just the sister of a member,
but an active supporter of the club, and very generous in her will
in contributing to the club.

Riess: Josephine Smith certainly was an articulate member.

Murdock: I have great admiration for Josephine Smith. I think she's a smart
cookie, and she does have a driving spirit. She's been most loyal
and interested in the club, and sensitive to its needs and develop
ment. I think we've been very fortunate to have somebody like
Josephine.

Riess: Without Josephine Smith, do you think the merger would have gone
through?

Murdock: Possibly. I think that we owe her a great deal of appreciation for
all of her understanding of what a tragedy it would be, although
I guess I had an optimistic feeling that the club was going to
survive, and was a little perplexed by some of the people of the
club that seemed to be in favor of the merger. I'm sure they meant
well, and they felt that there should be just one campus club, which
has its point. But I'm so glad that we still have our separate
entity, and that we've survived that period of stress.

7) Personal History

[Interview 2: December 1, 1981. Interview held at Riess home]

Riess: Miss Murdock, because we had too little time when we first

interviewed, I want to go back now and get more of your history,
and elaborate on a few questions about the club. Where were you
born, and when?*

Murdock: I was born in San Francisco in 1894. We lived in a house built by

the architect Ernest Coxhead, out on Scott Street near the Presidio.
I remember watching the soldiers going off to the Philippines,
marching along Lombard Street just below us. We went often to the
Presidio to watch ceremonies. It was a very pleasant neighborhood.
Of course later, it was on the outskirts of the Exposition in 1915,
which in my day was just a kind of pond and open space.

Riess: Were you the first owners of that Coxhead house?

Murdock: Yes, Father had it built. Coxhead was a friend and neighbor. His
own house was right around the corner on Green Street. I remember
going down to see the little Coxhead children.

*For a more comprehensive history, see Belle of the Sather Tower Bells,
1980, 52 p., an interview with Margaret Murdock conducted by Paul
Machlis in 1976. In The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley.

Riess: Your father was a printer?

Murdock: Father was a printer, and married rather late in life. He was in

his fifties when I was born. His wife died in 1903, leaving Father
with three children under ten, and he well over sixty. So it was
kind of a generation gap that made me feel that I knew a lot about
early San Francisco, because he had been quite active, not only as
a printer, but in church work, and to a certain extent in politics.

Riess: After your mother's death he carried on the household?

Murdock: Yes, we were all at home. I had a younger sister that I kept an eye
on. I had an older brother. I think we all developed a good deal
of independence, as you do when you have an older father who is a
darling but not too domestically inclined.

Riess: Did he bring his friends around?

Murdock: Yes, and one of his closest friends was Dr. Horatio Stebbins, for
whom he served as Sunday school superintendent under the ministry
of his Unitarian pastor. He knew Lucy Stebbins as a little girl
when he was a widower before he married my mother. He used to go
to have lunch with the Stebbins family with St. Nicholas in one
pocket and candy in the other. The children thought he was a very
welcome visitor to the home. That really is responsible for my
coming to the campus to work for Miss Stebbins; it was kind of all
in the family.

Riess: Did your father fill you early with ambitions?

Murdock: Not particularly. I think that he thought college was for boys.
So, my brother went right from Lowell High School to college. I
went to the San Francisco Normal School to become a teacher, and
did teach to earn my expenses to come to college. That was probably
my own desire rather than family pressure.

Riess: Where r".id your brother go to college?
Murdock: He came to the university.

Riess: Do you remember making that decision to go to the university or to
normal school?

Murdock: I do not think there was any question of my going to the university
when I was out of high school. I just went immediately to the
normal school and taught in San Francisco, which I enjoyed. But
I liked the university life. When Miss Stebbins invited me to be
the office assistant, I was glad to accept. I have never been sorry
that I had all of these years on the campus.

Murdock: Actually, I did not enter the university until 1916. I was a

freshman the first year, and a senior the next one. I graduated
in 1918 because I had accumulated some miscellaneous credits from
the normal school and from some summer session studies over here.
Ry majoring in economics I could kind of double up on courses. So
I really only had two undergraduate regular years here.

Riess: Was Miss Peixotto an inspiring teacher?

Murdock: She was a very inspiring teacher in economics, and Miss Stebbins
also taught courses. There was not any social welfare college at
that time. Social economics was part of the Economics Department;
the courses on poverty, and care and dependents and so forth, that
would normally be in sociology or in social welfare, were all given
under the aegis of economics.

Riess: It sounds like it was a strong department.

Murdock: It was a very strong department. Actually, I think I would have
majored in English or history, but I didn't know much about
economics and I liked English and history, so I thought I might as
well learn something different and widen my horizons a little by
something that just didn't come as easily as English and history
did.

Riess: Well, you certainly had a well established Puritan ethic there, I
must say.

Murdock: I expect so! [laughter]

Riess: Did you envision yourself doing something that was more related to
economics?

Murdock: I don't think so. I don't think I was a career aspirant particularly.
I probably thought I would go back to teaching. I did teach a
little while after I graduated, but was glad to return to the
campus. I think that I felt that the responsibility of educating
the very young was a pretty heavy responsibility.

Riess: Where did you live when you were a student?

Murdock: I lived in a boarding house and in a sorority. Then, briefly, my
sister, who was younger than I, kept house. So I had a variety of
campus experiences in different types of housing.

8) Dean Stebbins; The Mothers and Daughters

Riess: Then you were asked by Dean Stebbins to take the job.

Murdock: Yes, and in those days there was a dean and an assistant dean,

Mrs. Davidson, and one and later two office assistants that did a
little of everything because in those days the Dean of Women's
Office had housing, student employment, scholarships and loans and
a great many activities that are now scattered through different
offices all over the campus.

Riess: Is it entirely predictable, as you look back over the picture, that
it would be Dean Stebbins who would start the Women's Faculty Club?

Murdock: I think she and Dr. Peixotto and Dr. Morgan and the others were all
close friends. I think that they felt that it would be much more
dignified to have their own club. They were not militant people,
but they had their standards of quality. I think the position of
dean of women made her feel that the cause of women in general,
faculty as well as students, it was something that was part of the
picture.

Riess: Part of her job almost.
Murdock: I would say so, yes.

Riess: In one of the scrapbooks that I found in the vault, it mentions a
woman, Caroline Bates Singleton of the French Department, who
apparently wrote a letter that got Dean Stebbins thinking about it.
I wondered whether Caroline Singleton was somebody that we should
get down on the record.

Murdock: Yes, she should be. When I think of the women, I think of Miss
Coulter and Miss Peixotto and Dr. Morgan, but I do remember that
Miss Singleton was a leading spirit that way. She did not stay in
the campus too long.

I'm glad you had some of those archives , because Miss Davis kept
really careful records of everything. A lot of the material of the
early days, the records of meetings and so forth, tell quite a part
of the picture.

Riess: Oh, they are very beautifully kept records. As a matter of fact,
I wanted to know a little bit more about Miss Davis.

Murdock: Oh, Miss Davis was a delightful New Englander of scholarly interests,

You asked me about the faculty women, and Sarah Davis, like
Miss Peixotto and Miss Stebbins and several of the others, were what
you would call devoted daughters with a capital "D." They had
really quite wonderful mothers. I don't know who looked after which,
whether the daughter took care of the mother or in some cases I
think the mothers made life easier, at least in their earlier days,
for their daughters, which would be the natural situation.

Miss Davis and her mother both lived at the club. I remember
her mother very well, but Miss Davis I guess she was from Wellesley;
several of the physical education people came from Wellesley in
those days. She was just a naturally efficient secretary to keep
records of the club, and I'm sure of the department in a similarly
meticulous way.

Riess : Where did Dean Stebbins live?

Murdock: Miss Stebbins and her mother had a delightful house on Durant,
between College and Piedmont, belonging to the university, and
backing up to the Hilgard house on Bancroft. It was a center for
entertainment .

Miss Peixotto and her mother lived at Cloyne Court, which was
a faculty center of sorts too, in those days. Miss Davis and her
mother were burned out and moved into the club as part of the early
first residents. Miss Coulter and her mother and sister had an
apartment on Euclid and Hearst and then later built a house up on
Hawthorne Terrace.

So they [founders] were not, except for the Davises, residents
of the club, but lived near the club usually in something that was
a proper place for a mother and daughter.

Riess: That is fascinating. Let me continue down the list and then ask a
few more questions about that. How about Miss Helen Fancher?

Murdock: Miss Fancher lived on Durant. Miss May Lent, who was also in the
Household Arts Department, lived at the club. Miss Fancher had a
mother also in those days. So, I would say that the pattern of
quite a few of those was a scholarly daughter and an admiring
mother who was pleased that the daughter had recognition on the
campus .

Riess: Where were the fathers? These were all widows?
Murdock: Yes, all the mothers were widows.

Riess:
Murdock:

Riess :
Murdock:

Riess :

Isn't that fascinating? Of course, Agnes Fay Morgan was Mrs. Morgan.

Yes, she was, as I can recall, about the only one who had a husband.
It was quite amusing: she was a chemist, rather a nutritionist,
but her research was in chemistry, and so she usually wore a long
smock, and when her son arrived on the scene, everybody was
startled because nobody knew that he was on his way.

Do you remember the sense of startled shock?

Yes, I do, very decidedly. That kind of amusement that she could
hide it so successfully all during her pregnancy. She was just
Dr. Morgan doing her research. The long white apron, as it were,
kept that a deep secret.

Was she a spokesman, for
that?

dual career marriages, or anything like

Murdock:

Riess :

Murdock:

Riess:
Murdock:

Riess :
Murdock:

I do not think so. They all spoke easily, but I think the person
that everybody preferred as a club speaker was Edith Coulter. She
had wit and wisdom and flair for that type of thing. Miss Stebbins
spoke well, but I think it was a little more of an effort for her.
I think she was naturally shyer.

Well, in terms of the dual career thing, which is certainly an
issue these days, I wondered if you ever heard Mrs. Morgan on the
subject of how she balanced home and family?

No, I do not think I ever did. I saw her at the club and admired
her, but I was not in on any discussions of double careers.

Do you think she was a role model for students?

Possibly so. She had a very nice little son. Mrs. Davidson also
had a very charming son who became a doctor, but I think her
husband died even before Charles was born. So she was one of the
widows that made her career on thp campus. But in the other cases,
it was the mothers that were widows.

Miss Patterson, where did she live?

Miss Patterson had a very attractive home, on Cedar just below
Euclid.

Did she live alone?

Yes. Oh, wait a minute. Yes, I think she did.
but I am pretty sure that she was alone.

She had a sister,

Riess: Dean Stebbins's presidency of the club for all of those years,

non-stop, was there ever any question about that? Did anyone ever
run against her?

Murdock: I think everybody thought she was a wonderful president. I think

she would have been glad to have somebody else take it on. It just
seemed to be her responsibility.

9) Credentials Counsellor

Rieas: You had your job as the assistant in her office, and then got into
a different position. How did that happen, and when?

Murdock: I don't just remember just why it happened, but I was asked to be the
secretary to Professor Leonard in the late twenties when he was in
the President's Office as a coordinator of junior college relation
ships for the university, to see that the university and junior
colleges worked together for the best interest of students, and that
the university, among other things, in connection with staffing
junior colleges, hunted up the best people they could find, whether
or not they were University of California graduates.

There was a little feeling that the placement office had the
responsibility of placing University of California graduates only,
that while we would be glad to staff the junior colleges with our
own graduates, that it was our responsibility to help them search
for the best qualified college people they could get. It was an
office that was at first a little separate from Mrs. Cheney's
placement office with the thought of cooperating with junior college
recruitment.

Then it gradually merged. He went back to Columbia. He was in
the Education Department in the field of higher education. He had
this joint position as "university representative in education
relations." After he left for Columbia, his assistant got moved
over to handle, more or less, the college placement aspects of the
placement office. Then that got over into advising credentialling.
It involved the credentialling of the junior college people to
begin with. It ended By going into all the students, sort of the
technicalities of certification.

I did this for so many years under the title of credentials
counselor, but attached to the placement office. Rather loosely,
though, because it was sort of a separate function. They had the
products when the students got through, but I had the advising on
the way to the certification.

Riess:

Murdock:

So you really did work closely with students,
students would you be dealing with?

About how many

Riess :

Murdock:

A lot, because you had your current crop that were finishing up,
which might be two or three hundred. But, you had your undergraduate
student from their freshman year on who might say, "I want to go
into teaching." And the faculty advisor would say, "Go see Miss
Murdock," on combination of minors that would work with majors, or
the sequence of prerequisites, by which they could most easily get
through.

It was better to start in education courses as an elective in
the junior and the senior year, but we didn't accept education
majors. You always had your field. The idea was to see that you
had your best campus equipment and materials to teach. If you left
it all to the graduate years it was kind of doubling up a little bit
too much on the prerequisites and the practice teaching itself.

So you had your responsibility to see that they could edge in
a course or so per semester around their academic requirements to
facilitate finishing up easily in the fifth year.

Did you have a very wide network, then, of people that you knew in
the state? [telephone interruption] What kind of awareness did you
have of all of the high schools and positions that your students
might be guided into. How did you keep in touch?

I suppose if you are in that sort of job in Mrs. Cheney's office,
you get to know the schools pretty well. I don't know how it
happened, but I was also responsible for the schedules pretty much
of the university faculty people that went to visit schools, so you
knew who liked to go see the little schools because he could go
fishing on an odd day if he was up in the mountains [laughing],
or who preferred the Catholic private schools because they fed them
so well, and who liked visiting in the big schools in the cities.

That type of contact that the faculty people had with the
schools gave me insight into some of the little schools, of what
they needed. Of course, any native Califomian who has travelled
about a bit has a somewhat vivid picture of the types of schools and
the adjustments that some city-born young people will have to [make]
being up at Fort Bragg or Fort Jones or some of the very small
areas .

That was part of the pleasure of being in touch, and part of
the pleasure since has been the fact that you have been acquainted
with teachers from all over, and perhaps, at least they say, you
did something to make it easier for them to get started.

Riess: Oh, I should think it would be very effective, all the way around.
Did you find yourself placing many young men as teachers?

Murdock: Oh, yes, and quite a few that came back to the campus remembered me
as having helped them get their first jobs, like Garff Wilson, who
went up to Arcata and the college there, and some of the others
that were physical education, athletes, but got into administration
as so many of them do in time. These were ones that remembered me
from their undergraduate days.

10) Comments on Club Membership

Riess: You knew so many people, from your job, and then you were active in
the club. How active in the club were Agnes Fay Morgan, or Mary
Patterson both from home economics?

Murdock: I don't think either of them became very active as administration
members of the club, as far as that is concerned. They were busy
with their own departments, I think. Miss Patterson did a lot, when
we had parties, in arranging costumes, if we had a costume party or
something of that sort. She contributed from her field of interest
rather than the general administrative side of the club.

Riess: Talking about arranging, I wanted to ask you about Lucille Czarnovski,

Murdock: She did beautiful flower arrangements. She loved it and she did a
wonderful job. I think that was much appreciated as a form of
expression. Again, she was in the field of physical education, but
her main interest was the dance. I think she was an artist by
temperament, and flower arrangement went in with that side of her
interest rather than the gymnastic side of the Physical Education
Department.

Riess: Was she Russian?

Murdock: No, it's a Russian name, but she grew up in southern California,
second or third generation. So the name maybe sounds more like a
Pavlova dancer than it should, [laughter]

One of the characters at the club in the early days was Sara
Huntsman Sturgess , a very able person, but had her own temperament.
I think she believed in a bit of sarcasm and fight, seeing that
students developed strength to withstand criticism and such. Some
students adored her and some were so afraid of her that they just
crawled under the table. In her own philosophy she thought that was
the way to develop their independence. Some people could take it
and some couldn't.

Riess: I was struck by the number of physical education teachers and
administrators there seem to be on the roster of early Women's

Faculty Club members .

Murdock: Well, physical education was a required subject, so they had to
have enough staff people to take care of all of the freshmen and
sophomores that had to take something. The staff on the campus didn't
get tenure; they didn't, most of them, have the academic degrees to
start up the ladder toward full professorship, so that there were
a good many young people coming and going that taught in the
department and then went elsewhere.

Riess: Has there been any racial or religious prejudice in the club over
the years?

Murdock: I would say none. I don't think that was because the president was
a Unitarian and naturally broadminded in such things; it just
happened. There weren't too many minority people that were qualified
to be professors or even secretaries in the early days.

We always had Chinese. We always had, if it is a question of
denomination, a good many Jewish I mean, it wasn't all New England
Presbyterians, as it were. It was a pretty broad religious scope.
I don't think anybody would have been refused membership for any
of the racial or other qualifications.

Riess: Really, these days, everything is an issue. I wondered if there
were such issues then. For instance, when Christmas parties came
along, did people speak up and say, "Well, what about a Hanukkah
party?"

Murdock: I don't think there ever was, because Miss Peixotto was Jewish, but
I don't think that she ever felt that we should have Hanukkah
instead of Christmas, [laughing] I think in those early days a
great many of the university staff Dean [Charles] Lipman, Dean
[Monroe] Deutsch were both Jewish. I think the whole feeling is
that they were some of the best administrators we ever had, and
nobody cared whether they went to a church or a synagogue, if they
did.

Riess: Yes, that is what I would expect, but I still have to ask it,
because when you think of clubs you think of exclusiveness .

Murdock: Yes, well, the club was founded on the campus position that if you
were faculty, you were automatically eligible to join. If you
didn't care to ... I'd be always, in my early days being very loyal
to the club, surprised that some of the women in some departments
had no interest in joining. They were just not joiners, I guess.

Riess: But of that early list of people that were invited, some seventy-six
faculty, and 120 associates from the community, they did get a
remarkably high response.

Murdock: Yes, I think they did. I think the community of women, the head
of the YWCA, Lily Margaret Sherman, and so forth, were pleased to
be invited, and thought that it was a privilege to share the campus
side of things. Of course, those of us in administration were
pleased, I think, to be included in the early days. Josephine Smith
and some of the dean's assistants were not academic and knew it, but
it was nice to be counted in as part of the club.

That article that you had on the clubs in general it is
significant that each campus had a different pattern of membership.*
Our club distinguished between the faculty ladies and the faculty
women. The faculty ladies were the wives: they had their organiza
tion and were welcomed to use the Women's Faculty Club for their
parties, which they did very amiably, but no women were eligible
automatically because they were wives. To belong to the club you
had to be also a faculty woman, which meant a working person more or
less. You were taken in on your own distinction as contributing,
rather than your husband's.

Riess: That is interesting that those two words could be so neatly defined.

Murdock: Well, it is kind of amusing, when it might have been just happen
stance. It doesn't mean that women didn't consider themselves
ladies, but they thought that their interests were not just what
is it in German? Kinder, Kirche, Kuche, something like that.

I noticed that in the original constitution of the club it
said that the purpose was "to promote mutual acquaintance and
fellowship among women who are officers of instruction and government
of the university." Then in the sixties, the primary purpose is
"to promote and encourage educational and professional activities
for women associated." In other words, it seemed that what was
happening there was that they were moving from a more social to a
more support-oriented group, by the sixties. Do you think, in fact,
that was so?

Murdock: Perhaps so. It never was the sort of social center that other clubs
were. We had parties in the early days and very gay ones, costume
and fashion shows, and so forth. I don't think that it ever served
as the social center.

*The Centennial Record of the University of California, 1967, UC
Printing Department, pp. 230-231. See Appendices.

Murdock: People that liked to play bridge and dance and so forth did that in
other groups. It didn't turn out to be the one social activity to
occupy the campus community. I think that a good many of the people
were just not interested in bridge parties and things of that sort.
If they were, they did it through other organizations that they
belonged to.

Riess: The question of other organizations came up early. In the first

couple of years there was some discussion given to joining with the
College Women's Club, or having affiliated relations with Mills
or Stanford. Do you remember that?

Murdock: Not particularly. I think they were always on friendly terms with
the other groups, but I don't think they expected to affiliate. I
don't remember any really active discussion of mergers with the
other clubs.

In the early twenties I think it was quite remarkable that so
many women's groups did build club houses and get themselves
established. Perhaps it was an aftereffect of World War I where
women discovered that they could manage finances and take care of
out of home activities, but when you think that the College Women's
Club and the Women's City Club and two or three in San Francisco of
the same variety, all really got under way in the same period, it
sounds as though the modern women that feel they discovered
independence had something to learn from the early twenties.

Riess: Do you think that the residence possibilities, that aspect, was very
instrumental in all of this?

Murdock: Not particularly. I think that it was fortunate for quite a lot of
us that the club was there as a residence, but I think most of the
academicians preferred establishing their own homes. Some of them
did stay at the club for a year or so while they were getting
themselves established and perhaps being sure they were on the
tenure ladder, and then they wanted to have their own homes.

Riess: Being sure they were one the tenure ladder, the old publish or
perish?

Murdock: The responsibility was to establish themselves on the campus, and
for the first year or so it was handy to be right in the middle of
libraries and activities, the research centers of their field. But
to have their own homes was something that most of them really
wanted.

Riess: Earlier, you mentioned that there were the academic members, the

administrative, and the faculty wives. Have wives continued to be
asked to join? How has that been handled?

Murdock: I think that memberships are acted upon, and any woman in the

community of activity could be either proposed by somebody else, or
could perhaps hint to somebody that she'd like to join, and would be
acted upon. That includes faculty wives, if they are doing something
besides just being a faculty wife. There have always been quite a
few that have been quite active.

Riess : That's what I wondered, whether you could think of some who added
considerably to the club.

Murdock: Mrs. Branch, who had the Bentley School, is one of the faculty wives
that was a professional person and participated in club activities.
I can't think of any that held office. I think the officers of the
club have always been people on the campus payroll. That might have
included faculty wives who were also campus employees, although
that's rather rare, because they don't usually have two members of
a family. But there was Mrs. Mary Cover Jones, in child development,
psychology, some of the others who were joint campus staff as well
as having husbands on the campus, but not too many of them.

Riess: That's right. How about the wives of chancellors and presidents?
Murdock: Oh, yes, they've automatically been invited.
Riess: And have some of them been active?

Murdock: Yes. Mrs. Sproul participated, and several of the deans' wives have
been somewhat active in the club. That is true, they are exceptions
to the rule of automatic membership, and they've used it for
entertaining to a certain extent.

Riess: Do they become a kind of sponsor of the club?

Murdock: I don't think they've ever felt they had to be. The club has

never expected that of them. They've used the club and been I think
proud of it as one of the assets on the campus. But I don't think
that they've felt that they had to do something just because they
were members of the club.

11) Gifts and Friends

Riess: Can you remember the events surrounding the opening of the club in
1923? I know that a lot of very beautiful things were given to the
club at that time. It seems also to coincide with the Berkeley
fire for instance the piano.

Murdock: From the Wheelers, yes.

Riess: But, as to the giving of beautiful objects and so on to the club
when the club opened, was there a campaign?

Murdock: I do not think so particularly. As I said last time, some of those
very lovely things in the living room, a few of them, were purchases
that Hope Gladding made. I think that the club people, Miss Stebbins
and others, set the example of giving some of the early treasures.

The book that has the history of some of our treasures, they
were not all 1923, but quite a few of them were later gifts of
faculty people that had lovely things that they wanted to share with
the campus community. I think that it was a rather spontaneous
sharing of some things, of treasures. Others were later memorials
to different people. It was just very fortunate that we got off to
a start of having attractive things that encouraged people to add
to the supply.

Riess: Miss Julia George, "civic worker," tell me a bit about her.
[name associated with early gifts to the club ]

Murdock: She was a very close friend of Lucy Stebbins. I think that it was
through Lucy Stebbins that some of her lovely things came to the
club. She was a San Francisco social worker. I get a little
confused about how she got connected, whether because she was the
sister of Henry George, but she was a very interesting person.

Riess: It was too late to have an association with Phoebe Hearst.

Murdock: Yes, but Mrs. Hearst's generosity, of course, started the Women's
Gymnasium, and of course her funds provided everything from the
Mining Building on through. But she was not she didn't have
really [any] connection with the founding of the Women's Faculty
Club.

Riess: Were there other early benefactors to the club?

Murdock: I think the earliest woman regent, Mrs. Margaret Sartori in Los

Angeles, took a generous supply of stock when the club was built.
Later, Mrs. Stern gave porch furniture in her generous way. Mrs.
Sartori 's stock was eventually paid for, but I would say that she
was one of the early patrons. But it hasn't depended on outside
funds particularly; it was the members themselves who would come
through if they ran short, which they very seldom did.

Murdock: One of the early influences was our first manager, Muriel Ransom,

who bought the dishes when Hope was buying the other furniture, and
set up the standard of dining room taste that has carried on
through. She was a very close friend of Lucy Stebbins, and sister
of the Ransom that had the Ransom School in Piedmont.

Riess : I wondered about what the relation the Ransom and Bridges School.

Murdock: The Ransom and Bridges School was Marion Ransom. Her sister Muriel
was connected with the school at one time, but also was at Mills
as head of the dining department, and then came to the club and
gave us our start setting up the kitchen and its standards of
housekeeping.

One of the associate members was Florence Minard of Mills
College, an art fellow student of Hope Cladding's, as was Mary
Patterson, at the Rhode Island School of Design. Miss Minard was
an associate member with a keen interest in the club. And at the
time when the merger was proposed, she was really responsible in
the developing of a scrapbook to show all of our treasures and all
the important things that we had that ought to be preserved. I
think she felt she did a good deal to keep the club as a separate
entity by giving a little publicity to our treasures and our
position and what we had had to represent what we learned and
accomplished.

Riess: I understand Albert Bender was a great benefactor.

Murdock: Bender, of course, was just a darling and a very generous person.

We are not the only beneficiaries of his generosity, because Stanford
and Mills and other organizations have his memorials and great
respect for all that he did for them too.

He was a friend of Miss Peixotto and some of the early people
I'm sure he was a very good friend of Dean Deutsch, who was friendly
to the club. Albert Bender was just naturally generous about
donating things to different organizations. He was our early male
honorary member.

Riess: Did he enjoy the title and come and meet with you?

Murdock: Oh yes, he came and chuckled and smiled. I think he enjoyed it.

He was a very friendly, open-hearted person. I think that pleased
him very much to have that recognition.

Riess: Winfield Scott Wellington sounds like he did some work as a friend
of the club.

Murdock: Yes, he was in the same department with Hope and was the architect
of her house. Of course, he had wonderful taste, and appreciation
of fine things. I think I told you he used to send his students
over to see the collapsible table, the Chinese table that was the
grandfather of library furniture of that type.

Riess: When he had the treasures assessed, was that as a friend, or did he
do that as a paid consultant?

Murdock: No, I think that was as a friend. I don't think he was a paid
consultant for that.

I think the club was very fortunate all along in having the
support of the campus. I think President Sproul and Dean Deutsch
had a very friendly attitude, pleased that the club existed and
represented a certain quality that the other club didn't.

Riess: Can you remember, after the club was fully established and the men
faculty had to reckon with you just right out their back door, how
the interchange between the clubs was? After all, they had been
far from charming when Dean St ebb ins had originally wanted to join
them.

Murdock: I think the Victorian men, you might say, I mean the Men's Faculty
Club, was influenced in the early 1900s I suppose by Henry Morse
Stephens and Gayley, and some of the ones that probably hadn't
really an appreciation of women's positions on campuses. I think
as time went on that attitude changed, and the men just accepted
the fact that there were the two clubs.

I don't think there was any animosity between the clubs at any
time to any extent.

Riess:
Murdock:

No particular watershed times of the early days?

No, I think they all went along quite amicably. I think probably
the men's club was a little surprised that we managed to keep in
the black when they were pretty perpetually in the red, but that's
neither here nor there, [laughter] We were fortunate in having
the guardians of the treasury, Miss Sperry and Miss Tabor, who were
wanting to pay off our debts. I remember very well the annual
meeting at which Agnes Fay Morgan dramatically burnt up the mortgage.
It was pretty shortly after the club had started.

The men's club sort of suffered from bad debts. That didn't
bother them too much. I think women dislike being in debt and just
do all they can to keep out of it.

Riess:

Yes, that is right.
to pay cash.

Well, they were told by their fathers always

Murdock:

Riess :
Murdock:

Riess:
Murdock:

Riess :

Murdock:

There may be something to that. That is a development of the fact
that women are not supposed to be the big borrowers.

Yes, that is right. The club was always close to Cowell Hospital?

The hospital in my college days was nearer to where, well, Morrison
is, I guess. I remember when the new Cowell was built. The club
was always quite near the infirmary, later Cowell Hospital. The
women physicians were always responsible members of the club and
cooperating.

I remember also occasionally for an annual meeting, when there
wasn't a quorum, you could sort of summon somebody from across the
way, medical help [laughter], to make your quorum.

I wondered how many women physicians there were.

There were always women physicians, and they always were remarkable
women. Dr. Cunningham was one of the early ones; before that
Dr. Romilda Paroni Meads, and before that, Dr. Mary Ritter. There
was always a woman physician.

I looked at the elections over the years.
1932. Did you campaign at all?

You became a director in

The

No, I think most of these things, you sort of took your turn,
last thing I ever expected was to have to act as president. I
think Miss Espenschade, or somebody in physical ed who had a doctor's
degree, and was academic, which was what they preferred for
administrators of the club, she again was a dutiful daughter, and
she had responsibilities and didn't feel she could take it. When
you were elected to the board, the board decided who was which
among the officers. I sort of became president by default. The
club doesn't elect a president, it elects a board. Then the board
assigns the duties.

12) Loyalty Oath, and War

Riess: How did the loyalty oath issue affect or not affect the Women's
Faculty Club?

Murdock: I think they were very much disturbed about it, but there were not
very many members who happened to be involved. One of the people,
Margaret Peterson in art, was unwilling to sign the oath. I know
that several of us bought pictures and so forth to help support her
in her time of campus ostracism. But, I don't think chat the club,
as a club, got stirred up too much about it.

Riess :
Murdock:

Riess :

At the dinner table or the lunch table?

Oh, I'm sure there was discussion of it. I don't think they got as
upset as some of the men did, or some of the refugees from abroad
who felt it was a sign that Hitler was taking over.

The women of the university have often been in the services. I
wondered whether there was any coming and going of faculty club
women that you can remember in the wars.

Well, Katherine Towle became a colonel in the Marines, and I
remember World War I, Miss Peixotto wanted me to go back to
Washington to work for somebody back there. But that is a while
back. It dates me as being more familiar with the agitation of
World War I, than of World War II.

During this period did you roll bandages?
that?

Did the club get into

Murdock: We did it, but again, I remember that more for World War I than II,
knitting and rolling bandages. I think one effect the war had was
bringing more scholarly women out to Berkeley, so the club profited
by having sabbatical people from Wellesley or Vassar or Smith, who
came to study on the West Coast instead of going abroad as the
temptation always had been. So it was an enrichment to the club.

Riess: Well then, of course, it also meant that more women came into
professorial positions.

Murdock: Yes, a war does affect the demand and supply and so forth. There
is a better chance to get established at a time when there isn't
quite so much male competition.

Riess: Were you [the club] rationed? Did you eat beans during the war?

Murdock: Oh, yes, we were rationed. We watched our sugar. I think the club
has always had the miracle of having people that manage dining
rooms successfully, and you don't suffer too much, you just do your
patriotic duty and that's that.

13) Margaret Murdock, and Music

Riess: You have shared a home with Hope Gladding since 1940. You said it
was designed by Winfield Scott Wellington. Did she commission him?

Murdock: Yes, he was a colleague of hers in the department. She asked him

to do the house. I think he did a very successful job for her. He
was so interested in Treasure Island and going over to the fair
every day practically, that he procrastinated on his architectural
business. She got a little impatient with him because she was so
eager to move in. He was a little slow about tending to business,
as architect. She forgave him, and they have always been good
friends.

Riess: She was living in the club until that time?

Murdock: No, she was briefly in the club, thanks pretty largely to the delay
of getting the house finished. When she first came, she had
apartments or rooms and actually shared homes with several of the
faculty people. She lived in the Wells 's house and in the Schevill
house.

Riess: Do you remember when the club was using the forestry bungalow?

Murdock: Well, yes, as a matter of fact I remember the forestry bungalow

because if I had had four years in sequence on the campus I would
have majored in music. Music, like home economics, was a kind of
a semi-orphan field that the Greek professors were not particularly
interested in, so its housing was kind of an afterthought. For a
while it was in a cabin that was called forestry, and for a while
the Music Department was just exactly where the Women's Faculty
Club now stands. I mean that little piece of land was a little
cottage.

I'm not sure that the forestry building was really much of a
center. When it [Centennial Record] spoke about a room at Hearst
Hall, they had some parties in the original Hearst Hall before the
club was built. But, I think that the organizational meetings, as
that article said, were mostly in the homes of the original people,
like Miss Stebbins and Miss Peixotto.

Riess : And some at Town and Gown?
Murdock: Yes.

Riess: You remind me that I have separated you from all of your music. Had
you studied music as a young child?

Murdock: Not too intensively. It was a broken-up childhood. I had piano

lessons with Professor Julius Weber, who was a fine piano teacher in
San Francisco. [N.B. He changed his name to Julian Waybur, but was
Weber when he taught me. JMM] I didn't really go on with it. I
think you need a more stablized childhood to get practicing in very
faithfully.

Riess : You need a mother telling you to practice.

Murdock: I think that's what you need! Nobody ever was around to say it is
time to do a little practicing.

Mr. Weber wasn't used to children as pupils. He took me on
because he was fond of my parents. He really taught ine fractions
and long division, in quarter notes and half notes, because I was
too young to have gotten to that point in arithmetic when I got to
that point in music reading. So I can just see the little edge of
a page with the pie cut into halves and quarters to show how you
divided things up.

I liked singing. When I taught, I always had extra music
classes. I think I would have liked to have been a music major, but
that definitely had a four year sequence of harmony, counterpoint,
and so forth. I wasn't willing to spend four years in that sequence,
so I didn't major in music.

Riess: Why weren't you willing?

Murdock: Well, it didn't occur to me, I guess. I just was wanting to graduate.
So, my music has been a hobby. I love it.

I have been lucky to have had the pleasure of playing the
[Sather Tower] bells. I think that probably was partly the Women's
Faculty Club might be slightly responsible for it, because my first
boss, Mr. King, who taught in the German Department, had had young
man assistants, who were kind of irresponsible, and to have somebody
that lived on the campus, at the Women's Faculty Club, who could be
called upon on very short notice to fill in for him, was handy.

To have somebody, if you were to be there at ten minutes of
eight you are there at ten minutes of eight, was handy because he
had had predecessors that didn't have that sense of timing. So, I
think that maybe being there at the club was a real reason why I got
started to stay with the bells.

Riess: When was that that you started on it?

Murdock: In 1923.

Riess: Then did you just go as a sort of apprentice to him in the beginning?

Murdock: Yes, and you just sort of learn to play on the bells. There were
only twelve bells in those early days. It wasn't the elaborate
instrument that it is now.

14) The Parties

[Interview 3: May 14, 1982. Interview held at the Women's Faculty Club]

Riess: Miss Murdock, I wish you'd tell me about some of the parties at the
club. From what I've heard, they were very inventive and elaborate.

Murdock: Well, the Christmas parties were really quite delightful. We had a
chorus of ladies march in singing "Adeste Fideles" in proper Latin,
wearing lovely colored robes and white I don't think they call them
wimples, but at any rate, medieval headdresses, like nuns. Not
only some of the residents, but some of the associate members, like
Mrs. Adams, Professor Adams' wife, were part of the chorus, and Alice
Greer, who was in the placement office. We had a very excellent
pianist to accompany us, and whatever the other program was, the
choral group was featured, just as the men [The Faculty Club] had
their Monks who were part of their Christmas party.

Riess: They were The Monks, and you were looking a little like nuns?

Murdock: It wasn't on purpose. They just had always had Monks, and we didn't

really catch the idea [from that.] But this seemed to be appropriate,
and we had our equipment for it. Year after year after year, our
choral books and our nuns costumes , We marched with candles , and had
to see that we didn't drip the wax on our robes or our hands!
[laughs] But we were quite adroit.

Riess: Was there much rehearsing?

Murdock: We didn't have to rehearse for the chorus, but one year we did a

mystery miracle play, the Tr^neley Play, and I happened to pick up
the book to bring [today], I was one of the shepherds, and I
remember that we had a speech person here who said that I said,
"Hail, our comely [pronounced calm-ly] one," instead of comely
[pronounced come-ly] one. But I remember the play by remembering
that Christine Price, the librarian, was- the Third Shepherd, and did
her,

"Hail, put forth thy dall,

I bring thee but a ball.
Keep it, and play with it withal,
And go to the tennis,"

Murdock: We had the most beautiful Mary, who was the daughter of Professor
[Leon] Richardson. And I think the Father Joseph was one of the
Physical Education Department people, wfio could make a very good
man. For a long time we had her beard down in our costume trunk,
in case we were ever going to do that same thing again.

Sometimes we had a speaker, or a reader of Christmas material.
One of our best was Constance Steele's sister, Evelyn Little, who
was out at Mills, a professor there, and who was a very expert reader
and very adroit at finding different and interesting things to read.

But the Christmas parties were always fun, and Marian Moore,
who accompanied us on the piano, was I think a minister's daughter
and used to doing the Christmas carols with great gusto.

Riess: That was the old Wheeler piano?
Murdock: Yes, a treasure from the Wheeler estate.
Riess: Was it used much? Or is it?

Murdock: Quite a bit, because now we have several members who belong to the
Music Department. It's been sporadic. There have been times when
we have had programs of instrumental music, or different groups
that have been here have made use of it. For several of the parties
recently, somebody from the Music Department has played.

Riess: When you, a pianist, lived here, did you play the piano?

Murdock: Well, I didn't practice much. And I had my own little Steinway
upstairs, which I seldom played, because my next door neighbor
thought it was noisy. In fact, th.ere were three pianos, at one
time or another, on the top floor, and the person next to me for
quite a while had a large grand piano that took up so much space that
she practically had to sleep under the piano.

Riess: Who was she?

Murdock: She was a visiting scholar I'm not quite sure, because her

predecessor was very musical, and I didn't like to play in her
presence, very often. I remember practicing for a wedding march
once to play for a friend's daughter's wedding and she eventually
thought I had mastered my little piece, but I think it took some
time before it sounded proper to her.

And then we had a Chinese librarian who had her piano and was
not any more expert than I was, and it was a little bit of a problem
to have several pianos up on the third floor, and I think most of
us began to feel we had better keep them quiet.

Murdock: But getting back to the parties, the first one that I remember was
before the club was built. It was over at Hearst Gymnasium. That
must have been in 1921 or 1922, because they had already invited
associates, or administrative people, to supplement the early
professional scholars. It was a costume party, of sorts, and Miss
Fancher came as the Campanile, in cardboard. Hope Gladding was a
Raggedy Ann, with her red braids. And somebody else was Barney's
Beanery, like a sandwich board, advertising it it was one of the
popular eating places. I think I was the lady that was on the
outside of the Baker's Chocolate can. I had a little mobcap and a
little apron.

The most amusing costume that I can remember most vividly was
Constance Grey, who was the secretary of the Chemistry Department,
and Mrs. Branch, whose husband was in chemistry. They came as
tramps, wearing Professor [Gerald E. K. ] Branch's garden clothes,
and [laughing] the campus police at the door wouldn't let them
in for a while. But eventually they convinced him that it was a
costume.

Riess: Nowadays people are often sort of ambivalent about bothering to get
into costumes.

Murdock: I know. In those days it was being done, I guess. And we even
learned all our parts for the Miracle Plays. It was Mrs. [Sara
Hunstman] Sturgess who coached us. We did "The Owl and the Pussycat,"
and "The Bishop of Rum-ti-poo." One of the physical ed people
turned somersaults. And we had a very effective owl and pussycat
that went to sea in a peagreen boat ,

Another one I remember that was fun was our hat parties. You
didn't have to have a whole costume, but you wore a hat and people
were supposed to guess what books you were representing. I can date
that part because it was a time when you could do Fashion is Spinach,
or The Egg and I, which were both good hat titles! People enjoyed
dressing up and using their imagination for things of that sort.
And people didn't watch t.v. or have as many diversions; you made
your own entertainment.

They had a lovely Living Pictures party that Miss [Mary]
Patterson, I think, masterminded. I remember vividly that Miss
Stebbins' moth_er, Mrs. Stebbins, who was a really proper person for
it, did "Whistler's Mother" most effectively. I don't remember the
other tableaux for that party, but it was a very charming party and
took a good deal of planning.

Riess: When did people start doing Living Pictures?

Murdock: Oh, I think that was probably from Victorian days. It was lots of
fun, because people could do a Breughel or something or other quite
effectively.

I think for that one they used the small dining room as the
stage, and the audience was in the hall. Usually the library was
the stage, or the performance would be just at one end of tne living
room.

I remember one in which there was a domestic scene, and the man
of the house in it was dressed up properly, and I was driving her
home and we were down on the campus and for some reason got stopped
and she was very embarrassed to be in this masculine costume, and it
was all very amusing because the campus policeman looked a little
startled.

Riess: Did you do skits, where the members wrote the lines?

Murdock: I can't remember particularly. We might have, but I don't seem to
remember using people's talents. There were people who could have
done it; Barbara Nachtrieb was very active in dramatics in college,
took the lead in "Parthenia" and so forth, But I don't seem to
remember her, as a law professor, getting out of that character for
dramatics here. Not that she couldn't have, but I think she was
busy with other things. Possibly she had a small child then, and at
the time that we were going into such frivolity, she was otherwise
engaged!

Riess: Traditionally there was the Christmas party, and then what other
times of year?

Murdock: The Annual Dinner was always an event, with an excellent speaker,

quite often Miss Coulter of the library, who was one of the wittiest
speakers that you could imagine. That was an occasion for your
formal clothes and for recognizing new members, having them
introduced, and not too succintly, enough so that we really would
know them. That was an occasion that vou got out your finery for.

I remember once when two people appeared in identical dresses,
to everybody's embarrassment. One had bought hers in Nevada. I
think the people here, at Sather Gate Apparel and so forth, wouldn't
sell things that were twins to people that might meet at the same
parties. But this was an innocent buying of her evening dress in
another town and then finding its duplicate at the party. They both
were at the speaker's table!

Riess: This would be a dress you might wear to the opera?

Murdock: Oh, yes! And of course some of them "Lenty" [May Lent] had a long
blue lace that turned up every year. She didn't bother to get a
new one. It was pretty, and she only wore it once a year. She
kind of joked about it. But it got a little monotonous.

Riess: "Lenty." People tended to have those nicknames.

Murdock: Yes, although people had their dignity. I went to memorial services
for Emily Huntington, who was one of our earliest distinguished
members, and one of her colleagues spoke of how long it took to call
her even Miss Huntington, rather than "Professor," and 1 think he
never did get to "Emily."

Riess: Names like "Smitty" for Josephine Smith. How about you?

Murdock: I was just Margaret.

Riess: And Dean Stebbins? Very formally addressed?

Murdock: Yes, I knew her from early days, But it was awfully hard. She
finally told me, "Can't you say 'Lucy*?' 1

Riess: And Dean Davidson?

Murdock: She was called "Bobbie," and I don't know why.

When I think of the early people connected with parties and
things, I believe I hadn't spoken before of Margaret Beattie. She
was one of our early members who was very helpful in decorations
for parties and so forth. She didn^t dress up and act to the same
extent as some of the others, but her brother Douglas had a
beautiful voice, and he often sang at our Christmas parties, and it
would be something that you would remember with great pleasure.

In fact, we often did have male performers, like Douglas Beattie,
to sing. There was no reason for not, if there was somebody in the
faFiily who could contribute that way.

Riess: People brought their children to parties?

Murdock: Yes, we have quite a few that remember the club from their childhood
days, but there weren't too many members of the club that had them.

We had someone here whose grandchildren came, and they were
racing along in the corridor upstairs, and the older one said to
the younger, "You mustn't make so much noise. This is a sort of a
hospital." {laughter]

Riess: Did The Monks ever come entertain you at the club?

Murdock:

Riess :
Murdock:

Riess:
Murdock:

I think once or twice, but it wasn't a tradition. We often had a
campus group of singers, and we had the Boy's Chorus [of San
Francisco] one time.

Just as an activity, did the residents do play readings?

Not to any great extent. I think there were times when they wanted
to be more social than they probably needed to to keep their members
interested in the club, having bridge, or having dance or
something. But there weren't enough members interested in that,
and if they had that interest, or with, their husbands, in other
groups, that was fine. It was attempted here as a way to keep the
members together, but it never really took, particularly. They
were busy with their own professional affairs, and those that liked
bridge played it with couples at their own homes or elsewhere. But
the club didn't become a factor in that type of entertainment, I would
say.

Then as time went on, people went home at five o'clock, as it
were, and the club wasn't a place that they would gather at night
for parties. I think the time comes when transportation or safety
are factors. The club, of course, used to serve dinners and
thrived on it. But the time came when so few people came that it
wasn't financially sensible.

Who were the main guiding lights for the parties? You, for one.

I think all of us enjoyed that sort of frivolity in the early days,
but I think the younger ones that came in didn't think of it as a
social center to the same extent that it was true in the very early
days.

The Depression, the wars, would affect that?

Yes, I think so. People got more serious about things. If you
wanted to exercise your sense of frivolity it wouldn't be through,
the club .

Dressing as tramps, when people were begging in the streets.

They [the costumed tramps] were very effective! One of them had a
tooth painted out black. Humorous and unusual then, in the days
when women never wore pants!

You spoke of the war. We had our Victory Garden, We had a
parking lot over here, but it did have some space around it, and we
had several residents who got busy planting vegetables and feeding
us, and even one of the maids had her little plot and helped grow
things. I think there are some amusing pictures somewhere of people
out in their Victory Garden. But I don't think they'd do that now,
even if there was space.

Riess :

Why?

Murdock: The present residents are mostly visiting scholars, and not treating
it as a home [the club].

Riess: In the older days, visiting dignitaries who stayed at the club moved
right into the homey atmosphere?

Murdock: They accepted that, though they didn't always participate. It is

true of visitors in any home. Some get in and wash the dishes, and
others don't

We had here the person who wrote Mary Poppins. And I remember
being very thrilled to go upstairs once and find that Catherine
Drinker Bowen was there. And I enjoyed particularly the summers
that Madame [Alice] Ehlers was doing harpsichord concerts and would
be here for several weeks. She enjoyed the club very much and came
back for several years when she was concertizing here.

We had English writers, and we had a very interesting Jewish
scholar from Jerusalem. I remember I played some music for her in
the Tower, and the next morning when I was in the office, in she
came with a charming little tray one of these black plastic things
with coins set in it, Hebrew coins in it, and she gave it to me as a. sort of
a thank you for playing her music.

It was fun on the Tower to serenade some of our visiting people.
There was somebody who had been here in anthropology and gone to
Hawaii, so when she was back from Hawaii on a visit, I played
"Aloha" and various things for her. That was part of the fun of
knowing who was here, doing a little something on the bells to
surprise them.

[continuing discussion of visiting scholars and the club] I
think with our visiting people now it still happens that people pick
their brains about their fields, take advantage of their willingness
to share their expertise. It's been a blessing for the club. It
probably operates more at the breakfast table than elsewhere, though
when we've had our Lunch and Learn programs we have quite often
invited short term residents to share their experiences.

One of the people who sent us [recommended staying at the club]
several interesting people was Professor [George] Papenfuss in botany,
who came from South Africa and knew scholars all over the world.
Whenever any women scholars in his field were in this vicinity, he
saw to it that they stayed here. He sent such nice people!

Transcriber: Matt Schneider
Final Typist: Nicole Bouche

AGNES ROBB

66a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Agnes Robb

1) The Founders of the Women's Faculty Club 67

2) Membership 71

3) The Club During the Depression, and the Loyalty Oath 75

4) President Sproul, and Women at the University 76

5) Lunch 78

Agnes Robb, Administrative Secretary to President Sproul, 1951

Agnes Robb
January 20, 1982
Interviewed at her home

1) The Founders of the Women's Faculty Club

Riess : Miss Robb, you have certainly been a member of the Women's Faculty

Club long enough to have clear memories about its founders . Tell me
about them, please.

Robb: The founding members of the Women's Faculty Club, like the Founding
Fathers of our nation, were brilliant women of the time who were
leaders in their chosen fields.

In 1919 the Women's Faculty Club was the brainchild of Lucy
Ward Stebbins, the daughter of a distinguished San Francisco
Unitarian minister. Perhaps the best characterization of her is
to quote from the honorary degree conferred upon her by the president
of the University of California at the 1953 commencement.

Dean of Women on this campus for almost three decades,
and for most of those years Professor of Social
Economics. Active in the establishment of the
Schools of Nursing and Social Welfare, and in their
sound educational development. A teacher and dean
"indu'd with sanctity of reason," who saw clearly
into the hearts and minds of students, and stimulated
them by precept and example to achieve their highest
potential. No single individual has contributed more
to the personal and general welfare of the University's
women, and few have touched helpfully so many phases of
our University life.

Jessica Peixotto, a colleague and a good friend of Dean Stebbins,
called together several women leaders on the campus to consider the
formation of a faculty group. They became the nucleus of the founders
of the club.

Miss Stebbins had no peer in her field.

Riess: As dean of women did Miss Stebbins have a chance to do any teaching
at all?

Robb : Oh, yes, she taught and I still see former members of her classes.

I remember if Dean Putnam, the dean of men who handled student
affairs, had a disciplinary problem, an intercampus or community
problem, he always consulted Dean Stebbins. He told me he would
never think of coming to a conclusion without consulting Dean Stebbins.

Miss Pexiotto was the second woman to get a Ph.D. and the first
woman full professor at the University of California. She was active
in all phases of economics, and especially in child welfare, and
wrote extensively. She was the eldest of six children, and the only
girl in a prominent Bay Area family.

Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong (Barbara Grimes in the early days),
was another distinguished faculty woman. President Clark Kerr in
conferring an honorary degree said, in part, of her:

Distinguished by the breadth and depth of your teaching
and research in law and economics . . . with a sustained
interest in the law affecting the more dependent
sections of the community. An authority on family law
and community property.

She was known beyond the boundaries of the state. She was
prominent in her college days as beautiful, talented, and brilliant.
She participated in the formulation of the social security progran,
and worked closely with Chester Rowell in the set up of the state
health program. She was professor of law and the first woman law
professor in any major university.

Riess: Formidable combination!

Robb; Oh, she was just really a very unusual person: beautiful, as I said,
and very bright. As a matter of fact, she told a story: John
Simpson, who received the University Medal in the class of 1913,
thought he should split it in half for Barbara because she should
have had the [honor]. Barbara told me also that some of the
professors had said that, but she was a woman so she didn't get it.
John Simpson was enamored with her for many years .

Riess: Tell me about Agnes Fay Morgan. What kind of a person was she?

Robb: Agnes Fay Morgan - "Eminent biochemist, pioneer in the development of
the science of nutrition . . . Your university today honors your
extraordinary contributions to the advancement of knowledge in your
chosen field," so said President Clark Kerr in conferring her
honorary degree.

Robb: She was a delightful person. She was the one who discovered Vitamin
B to keep our hair from getting grey. She was a great I guess I
can't coin a word she was great on vitamins. She had a son. I
think she came from the state of Washington. She was interested in
wines too, and became a member of the Wine Institute composed
almost entirely of men. I'm not certain this is the correct name.

Riess : Yes, that is.

Robb: I remember Vice-President [ClaudeJ Hutchison asking me one time for
suggestions for a certain committee. I was giving suggestions, and
I don't think they amounted to much. Then I said, "Agnes Fay Morgan."
He was looking for a man. Then I said, "Why don't you put on a woman?
There is Agnes Fay Morgan." "Oh! She is just like one of us!" So
she was. Her field, of course, was largely a field where men were
predominant.

She was active in Davis as well. She wasn't in home economics ,
I have forgotten what the department was called, [household science]

Agnes Fay Morgan I knew well and admired. Her hair was very
auburn and reddish, and there was always the talk, "You know, I
think she dyes it. You know, I don't think that the vitamins did
it." She laid great stress on the fact that that was possible.
I said, "Gee, I am practically grey. How about doing something for
me?" She said, "Oh, I should have had you a long time ago to do
anything. "

She told me a story about Admiral Byrd. She met him at some
occasion. The question of vitamins came up. He was going on one of
his expeditions and asked her to set up a menu for the trip which
was to extend over months. She did, and it was highly vitamin
included. The trip was very successful the whole time, with no
trouble at all healthwise. So that is a contribution. I don't
know how well that is known.

Riess: That is very interesting. Why did he ask her? What was the connection?

Robb: Well, they met at some kind of an affair, or their paths crossed.

Maybe he was concerned as to, "What do I feed these men when we get
down there?" I don't know. Anyway, this was a personal interview
with her and him. He asked her then to do this and she did. They
had no trouble whatsoever the whole time.

Riess: What really did Dean Hutchison mean when he said, "Oh, she is just
like one of us?"

Robb: It meant that she is just part of the discussion, "We don't pay any
attention to whether she is a woman, it is what she has to offer."

Riess: Speaking of the founders of the club, who was Margaret Beattie?

Robb : Margaret Beattie was a professor of bacteriology. She was one of
the founders .

Riess: She was one of the charter members, I know. I have a little list
here.

Robb: And she was one of the last to die. I think perhaps Katherine Bishop
was the last of the founders.

Miss Beattie was beloved by students. She was ready at any
time to help a student in trouble, financial or otherwise. Soon
after Mr. Sproul became president he appointed a group of faculty
men and women to serve as advisors to students not fraternity or
sorority members, to help orient those from out of town. This plan
was discontinued and the dean of students enlarged their activities.

Riess: What did those early founders represent to other women in the
university community?

Robb: I think, Miss Stebbins, Miss Peixotto and Mrs. Armstrong were for
women's rights, but not as we know of women's rights today. They
were forerunners. They had their place but they had to earn it,
and compete, very definitely compete.

Miss Edith Coulter was one of the club founders. I think she
was a head librarian. She wasn't head of the school or the main
library it was Mr. Leupp and later Mr. Coney but she was maybe the
reference librarian. She was a very competent person, somewhat like
Hiss Stebbins, very severe. She had a very subtle sense of humor.
I am not sure Miss Stebbins had a sense of humor. She had a sense
of friendliness, and a warmth that came eventually, but Miss
Coulter had a very subtle and good sense of humor.

Miss Coulter was librarian when I was in college. She
patrolled the main reference library. "Put on your mask!" and you
put on your mask when she told you. It was during the flu epidemic
of 1918. If there was any conversation in the library, she would
march down the hall with great authority and say, "No talking in
the library!" She meant it and you knew she meant it. It was the
old school teacher [type]. But clie was a fine person. She made
great contributions to the club in its administration.

Sarah Davis was one of the very first five or six founders.
She was treasurer for many, many, many years. I don't know how to
characterize her without defaming her. I don't want to say a little
old lady, because she wasn't an old lady, But she was a little
spinster, a very definitely old time spinster lady who was most

Robb : devoted to the club, most accurate about everything, and served It
very well. She was quiet and shy but very effective. Evidently
she was one who could contribute much because the Stebbins-Peixotto
people drew her in from the very first. I have forgotten what her
field was.

Riess: She was a person for whom the club was very important then.
Robb: Oh yes, I think the club was her life, probably.

The ones who contributed the most to the ornamentation in the
club were Mary Patterson and Hope Gladding.

Riess: You mean as far as acquiring beautiful things?

Robb: Yes, and in arranging. That is, she [Mary] would do that.

Riess: What about Hope Gladding?

Robb: As far as I remember, and this may not be accurate, Mary Patterson

was more active than Hope Gladding in my days. That's an impression.

2) Membership

Riess: What has your role been in the club?

Robb: I have always been a supporter. I used the dining room frequently

and contributed when somebody died to the memorial fund. I think

only once did I serve on a committee, which didn't do what I had
hoped they would.

Riess: What was that committee:

Rohb : That was, they would invite certain community members who were

distinct in a profession or a community service as honorary members
of the club. It fell flat. Somewhere along the line, I think, the
policy has changed and they elect prominent community women.

Riess: I wonder if that fell flat because of the presence of the Berkeley
Women's City Club and other alternative clubs.

Robh: No, I don't think so, I haven't any recollection of that. I think
the main thing was that the committee felt that it was strictly a
university affair and that they shouldn't go outside the University.

My intention [in this interview] was to speak only of the
individuals and not of the club because I was not intimately
connected with the activities of the club.

Riess : I noticed in your earlier oral history you said that in college you
hadn't been much of a joiner.* You felt that that was, in a way, a
mistake.

Robb : It was. I am not a joiner, generally. I belong to the Berkeley
Clinic Auxiliary and I served in that as treasurer and secretary
and archivist. Then I was retired. At least Mr. Sproul had retired
and I had less and less and less to do. That is about the only
thing that I really have participated in. Socially, yes, but not
administratively, so to speak.

Riess: I wondered, in relation to the Women's Faculty Club, whether you
felt that because of your particular position, that it was just
somehow inappropriate for you to be too involved.

Robb: No, no. As a matter of fact, I don't know how I became a member,
because in the early days you had to be a faculty member.

Riess: Margaret Murdock was not faculty, and neither was Josephine Smith.

Robb: But Josephine Smith didn't come in until sometime later. Margaret
came in in 1921. Hope Gladding was active in the early days. I
don't know whether her [Margaret Murdock' s] connection was as close
to Hope in those days as now.

I asked Miss Smith the other day, I said, "I guess I am the
oldest member of the club." I thought probably I was. I didn't
realize Margaret Murdock was such an early member, because she was
active as well as employed in the club.

Smitty, as she was affectionately known in the president's
office, said, "Oh, no. I am older than you are." I said, "I meant
an earlier member of the club." She said, "Oh, Sproul got you in
the club." Well, he didn't.

Riess: Among the earliest members of the club were librarians. Librarians
are not faculty.

Rohb: No, but they were in a status all their own. Their faculty titles
were changed later in the Sproul administration, I think. [1963]

Riess: You say you don't feel that Dr. Sproul pushed you in?

Robb: I know he didn't, because he was just, oh, very careful. He fused]
no influence whatsoever.

*Agnes Roddy Robb, Robert Gordon Sproul and the University of California.
an oral history interview conducted 1973-1974, Regional Oral History
Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1976.

Riess : So you weren't sent to the club as the president's spy?

Robb: Oh, no. Did somebody say that?

Riess: No, I just had that idea, to find out what the women were thinking.

Robb: No, well, as a matter of fact, I don't think I was thinking very
much. But, I did enjoy the club as a dining room.

Is anybody talking about Miss Ranson? Somebody should.

Riess: I have heard that those were great days under her management. I
would like to hear more about that.

Robb: Well, when I joined the club Miss Ransom was the manager. I guess
she ran the club in every way, administratively as well as the
dining room. The dining room was a tea room of the highest order.
On and off they would serve dinners depending on labor conditions;
it wasn't always luncheon and dinner. The menus and the cooking
were delightful. The meals were beautifully prepared and
beautifully served.

Riess: Was it always students who served?

Robb: Probably, most of the time they did. It was a good source of income
for the students.

Riess : What kind of a woman was Miss Ransom?

Robb: Well, she was, shall I say, a maiden lady? Very elegant in her

appearance. She wasn't a style person necessarily. She looked like
a lady in every sense of the word and was. She ran the Ransom School.
She came out of there. Some of the members of the club were from
the Ransom School: Katherine Towle and Eleanor Gardner, and who
else? I can't think offhand; perhaps Patricia Sizer.

Riess: Josephine Miles used the term "blue stockings" about some of the
early club women.

Robb: Well, I know the term but I don't ever remember it used on the campus.
I suppose they would have been the founders, Olga Bridgman, Hope
Gladding and Mary Patterson among later leaders in the club. I
thought of them as socially prominent and effective women.

Riess: When you talk about socially prominent, do you...?

Rohb: That is, socially prominent in the club. Our leaders. Leader would
be a better word than socially prominent. The club was not a social
organization at any time.

Riess: Was it quite consciously not social?

Robb : I think so. "Lunch and Learn," and the retirement parties are
relatively recent.

Riess: Earlier they would have avoided bridge lunches and all of that sort
of thing?

Robb: Yes, oh yes. You see, they were faculty women. In those early days
they had to be faculty. If administrative, you probably were of
faculty qualifications. It was definitely the Women's Faculty Club.

Riess: But why wouldn't these faculty women have enjoyed a place where they
could just be social?

Robb: Miss Stebbins, of course, had a social life of her own. I think they
all had social lives of their own.

Riess: I see. The women who were the residents in the club, that was
different.

Robb: There weren't very many residents. There were three, four or five,
and they stayed on for several years after they retired. They
finally had to leave. These were Mary B. Davidson, and May Dornin
and Lucille Czarnowski.

Mary B. Davidson was dean of women. She lived at the club after
the Berkeley fire in 1923. Her house was burned down and I think
she lived in the club from then on. She became dean of women,
succeeding Lucy Stebbins.

Riess: I don't know whether the idea was to have the residents as a way of
making money for the club, or whether it was a way to serve the
women faculty who needed a place to live. Which do you think?

Robb : I think that was it .

Riess: To serve.

Robb: Yes, because I don't think they took graduate students until later.

See, all of those were members of the faculty, or top
administrative offices like Mrs. Davidson. First she was assistant
to Dean Stebbins for many years, and it was an excellent combination
Because Miss Stebbins was a stately person in appearance not in
personality, but in appearance and in her relations she was commanding
in appearance. Mrs. Davidson was just the opposite. She was the
light, social, friendly person. So it was a beautiful combination.
It went on for many years, I guess until Miss Stebbins retired.

3) The Club During the Depression, and the Loyalty Oath

Robb: Another member from relatively far back is Ruth Okey, who is still

alive and worked under Agnes Fay Morgan. They were entirely different
types of people. Ruth Okey had some part in the club later on. I
think the club ran into menu difficulties, perhaps during the war,
and they were seeking information, and they called on Ruth Okey for
help.

Riess : Because of rationing they were unable to get what they needed?
Robb : Yes .

Riess: How did the club manage during those periods of crisis: the war, the
Depression, the loyalty oath?

Rohb : In the Depression I think that they must have lost a number of

members. I know Blanche Miller, who went in presumably about the
same time I did because we worked in the controller's office at the
same time and we always ate on Tuesdays she resigned because she
had to curtail.

Only once were the university salaries cut. They were restored
after one year, probably the only place in the country where that
occurred.

Riess: You mean the only place in the country where they were actually cut?
Rohb: No, where they were cut and restored so quickly.

Riess: You are saying that it was so tight that somebody would resign their
membership just to save the two or three dollars a month.?

Robb: I guess so. I know she said, "Oh, well, there are other things."

That is the only one I know. I don't think there was a massive exit.

Riess: During the loyalty oath, do you remember the club being a place where
there was a lot of discussion and concern about that?

Rohb: Oh, I am sure there was. I don't think that it was organized

discussion. I know I was always being approached by faculty on both
sides of the problem. I'd come back to Mr. Sproul and say, "Oh, I'm
scared. "

"You are doing all right, you are doing all right,"
Riessr: They'd want you to tell him what they thought.
Robh: Yes.

Riess: Well, he might have Been interested to find out.

Robb : Yes, he was. He'd say, "Well, that's all right, you are doing fine."
"Oh, but I don't know!" I was scared!

Riess: Well, I am sure that they probably would ask you, "Now, what does he
think? What is he doing?"

Robb: I know that some of the men talked to me. Professor [Robert] Erode
was one very early in the days. Maybe I didn't do well by Professor
Erode. They would talk, you know, and maybe I didn't sell their bill
of goods enough because I am not always articulate.

Riess: They probably thought they could talk Agnes into something or other.
How did you deal with that, when people buttonholed you and said,
"You know, I want you to tell Bob Sproul this?"

Robb,: Well, he always had a ready ear. I tried to be correct in transmitting
it. I don't know. I was a channel of communication. There is no
question about that. I felt that I was. He felt that I should be,
too, because I had his intere&t at heart first. You never know how
much the other fellow is working for himself through you.

4) President Sproul, and Women at the University

Riess: Did President Sproul have any particular attitude toward the Women's
Faculty Club?

Robb: Yes, he did. He was interested in the club, but he and Mrs, Sproul
felt the President's House should be used in place of our facilities.
There was a time when he had some funds. I don't think the club
rose to the occasion. They did something for the kitchen. I am
sure they could have had more, but they didn't seem to be interested
at the time, or didn't know how to present it or something.

Riess: Alxout what time do you think that would have been?

R^bh: Well, it would have been during the time he was president, so it
would have been the middle fifties maybe. Anyway, they got a
sizable sum for the kitchen. I have forgotten. Catharine Quire, I
think, was active in the thing. They seemed to be satisfied that
that was enough. He said, to me, "Well, do you think that is all
right?"

I said, "Well, they haven't come up with anything." I was not
promoting anything within the club. I was the channel of communica
tion between the two. I tried to maintain that position always.

Riess : It never occurred to them to take advantage of this opening wedge.
Robb: No, I don't think so.

Riess: That is interesting, because later on they really needed money. I
guess maybe in the fifties they didn't feel they did.

Robb: Well, I can't pinpoint the time because I space my time: in California
Hall and in Sproul Hall. It was "before and after" California Hall
in my later life.

Riess: In my letter I said to you, "What do you recollect of the administra
tion's view of the club? Was: it amused and tolerant, or respectful,
or uninterested?" What was President Sproul 's attitude toward
faculty women?

Robb: He was strong for faculty women. I think in my book I tried to make
the point that it was beyond him.* He was criticized for not
appointing more women on the faculty, but they had to come up
through the prescribed faculty procedure. So there was a certain
aversion to women. They had to compete, and the leaders of the
Women's Faculty Club did, you see.

Riess: There was a large segment of physical education people who were in
the club in those days. I wondered whether they were academic.

Robb: Yes, they were, but they had a different title. It is somewhat like
the business tools. I think when I was in college, at least right
after I was in college, there was the question of typewriting and
stenography being given in the Economics Department. That was
ruled out. I think physical education was on a higher level, but
somewhat the same. It was a vocation rather than a profession.

Riess: That is exactly the dichotomy: vocation, profession.

Robb: But they regarded themselves as academic and I think they were
members of the senate. I am nof. sure.

Riess: Well, there were certainly a lot of them.

Robb: Oh yes, well, they were a department of women. I think physical
ed was a required subject. You see, there was men and women. In
the Sproul administration they were joined together, which was a
movement somewhat favorable to the recognition of women, let's say.
Although I am not sure they didn't think they were put down.

*See Robb oral history, cited p. 72.

5) Lunch

Riess: You said that on Tuesdays you had lunch with...?
Rohb: Blanche Miller.

Riess: Yes, with Blanche Miller. Now, did you have other particular days
of the week that you would meet people there?

Robb : Oh, I used to eat with the deans regularly, but not obligated; that
is, not the first Tuesday or the second Friday or something, but two
or three times a week. There was Ruth Donnelly and Bobbie [Dean
Mary B. ] Davidson, and Marion Morrow who was Ralph Merritt's
sister-in-law, and an intimate friend of Bobbie Davidson and perhaps
was her guest.

Riess: This group would just be there, and when you arrived you would sit
with them?

Robb: Yes. Sometimes I would call, "Are you going to be there?" Ruth
Donnelly, later president of the club, has since died. Also,
Catherine Quire was the other, and she has died. She was dean of
women too. Sometimes Katherine Towle, but not always.

Riess: What did you do, talk business at lunch?

Robb: Oh no, we just gabbed. Sometimes it was club gossip. No, no it was
social. They were all friends who met.

Riess: You wouldn't be likely to arrive there at noon saying, "Oh, what a
morning we have had, such and such is blowing up."

Robb: Oh, yes, maybe. Well, Ruth Donnelly and Mary Davidson very often
would. Ruth wasn't in the same department but her business was
related to the students. She was a good president of the club.

Riess: What do you think makes a good president of the club?
Robb: A good administrator and a good speaker.

Riess: The matter of being a good fundraiser apparently has not been an
issue.

Robb: No, I don't recall it was ever an issue. As a matter of fact, the
dues, I think, are ridiculously small. Now, apparently it is doing
very well financially.

Riess: Josephine Smith said to me that when she went to the club she would
always put herself behind a magazine because she wanted the club to
be an hour when she was free.

Robb: Smitty sat by herself with the Saturday Evening Post when an Agatha
Christie story would come out. I think it was Agatha Christie.
Whoever it was, she would have to read that. Then she took to
skating and she would come with her book and she'd read and practice
the steps under the table. She's quite a "gal." That's very true.
She would go and sit by herself. Nobody dared even say "good morning."
She was engrossed.

Riess: If you didn't go there, you would just go to lunch on Telegraph
Avenue?

Robb: Yes, I belonged to the Berkeley City Club and I used to go down
there occasionally.

Transcriber: Beverly Butcher
Final Typist: Nicole Bouche

MAY DORNIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS May Dornin

1) Library Career 81

2) Life Inside the Women's Faculty Club 84

3) Committee Work 90

4) Special Visitors to the Club 92

5) Friends and Residents 96

6) Early Surroundings of the Women's Faculty Club 100

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May Dornin, Librarian, University Archives, 1936

Photo by Kse Coleman

May Dornin

March 5, 1979

Interviewed at her residence in The Sequoias, San Francisco

1) Library Career

Riess: When did you graduate from the university?

Dornin: In 1921.

Riess: When did you first become aware of the Women's Faculty Club?

Dornin: I worked my way through college because my father had died and I

had to have some [financial] help. I was very, very lucky to get a
job in the library as a student assistant. The job I had was putting
those little labels on the backs [spines] of books, and then writing
the "call numbers" on then. That was in the catalog department.

At the end of the catalog room, at the end of the library too,
there is a cloakroom for the women staff. Well, when I would be
coming in with my coat, to put my coat away, why perhaps Miss [Edith]
Coulter, and Miss [Pauline] Gunthorp or Miss [Nella Jane] Martin or
so on, might have been at a meeting the night before about this, and
they'd be talking about it. Of course, I didn't stand there to listen
to it, but if I was there a bit I'd overhear this I knew that
something was doing. And the other student assistants, they would
hear odds and ends. This was during the year 1919.

What was happening was that the women were getting very upset
because the men you see, oh, it was so macho in those days. In the
men's club [The Faculty Club], no women could come in, unless they
were escorted by a man, and they could only come on very special
occasions. You know, they had a "ladies night" or something like
that, and then faculty women were admitted and the faculty wives could
come with their husbands. Or, once in a while, if it was some
important visitor, they might have a dinner and they might invite the
wives of the deans or the most highly positioned women, such as Dean
St ebb ins.

Riess: But the faculty women?

Dornin: But the faculty women couldn't go, although it was a faculty club,
not a men's faculty club, a faculty club.

Now Miss [Lucy] Stebbins, I think, was one of the earliest
people to talk about it, because being dean of women, as she was,
from 1913 to 1936, everything that had to do with the women she
was very keen about. Her own student women, she didn't like the
way we were treated either. There were lots of things that we
couldn't do; the boys had things that we didn't have, as women.

For instance, when I entered the university in the fall of
1915, the center of ASUC activities was the high, concrete basement
of North Hall, which stood where The Bancroft Library now stands.
The student book store occupied the south end of the basement,
the Daily Californian and other student offices, the north end.
In between was an area known as "The Joint." It contained a
barber shop, a shoe shine stand and a lunch counter. "The Joint"
was sacred to the men students . Women students who did not live
near enough to walk home for lunch, either carried it, or went to a
public restaurant off campus.

It was not until 1923, when Henry Morse Stephens Hall, the
first student union, was built, that there was a centrally located
lunch counter, on campus, open to both men and women.

Riess: Was Dean Stebbins militant, would you say?

Dornin: I wouldn't say so, because of all the gentle and sweet-tempered

people you ever met in your life, it was Lucy Stebbins. She wasn't
the kind that was militant, but she was concerned. That's a better
word for it. She was very concerned over the place that the women
had on the faculty.

Of course, when The Faculty Club was formed, there weren't so
many women on the campus. But by 1913 or so, when she became dean,
there were, oh, 4,800 students on the campus, of which perhaps
eighteen hundred were women. So, I think she was one of the first
people who began to think about it. And, as I say, these library
women were talking about it .

Now, Mrs. Agnes Fay Morgan Agnes Fay Morgan was

assistant professor in the Division of Nutrition in the College of
Agriculture, and when it became a department, and can:^ into the
College of Letters and Science, she became head of the department
she had a Ph.D., which Miss Coulter didn't have, and neither did
Miss Stebbins. She had a Ph.D. , so she could stand up a little bit
more.

Dornin: Then, there was also Dr. [Jessica] Peixotto, with a Ph.D. in

economics. She was the first woman to become a full professor, in
1918. Now, that was just about the time when they were talking
about building the Women's Faculty Club. Here she was, a full
professor, and she couldn't go to The Faculty Club. So she had some
reason to feel that way. So did Dr. Bridgman, who was an M.D. and
a Ph.D. She came on the campus in 1915 in the Department of
Psychology, Olga Bridgman.

Riess : Did these women want the club as a residence, or was a place to
meet?

Dornin: A place to meet. How much they talked about residence, I don't

know. None of them that I've spoken about so far ever lived in the
place. They had homes of their own.

I was just a student in 1919 when they were talking about it.
In 1923, when it was built, I was off the campus. You see, I
started to get a secondary credential, for teaching, but then when
I was a junior the Library School was established. By that time I
had enough work in libraries to know that I liked that very much.
I wasn't so sure I was going to like teaching, but when I first
came in, there wasn't much else open; there were so few jobs open
to women then.

When I first came to the University, Mr. [Joseph C.] Rowell was
the librarian. When he retired in 1919, Mr. [Harold] Leupp was made
librarian. Mr. [Sidney B.] Mitchell was ambitious to be something
better than head of the order department, but Mr. Leupp and
Mr. Mitchell were too near the same age for Mr. Mitchell to stand
around waiting for Mr. Leupp to retire, so he had to do something on
his own, either leave Berkeley, which he didn't want to do, or find
another position. At the time, there were no accredited library
schools west of the Mississippi River. Here was an opportunity for
Mr. Mitchell to establish a library school at the University of
California. However, such a proposal would have to meet the approval
of both the Academic Senate and the Board of Regents, and a great
deal of preliminary planning would have to be done. Mr. Mitchell
must have had this idea in mind for a long, long time and have done
his "home work," so to speak.

When the Announcement of Courses for the fall semester 1919
appeared that summer, there was the addition of a Department of
Library Science in the College of Letters and Science, with
Mr. Mitchell as chairman of the department.

Up to this point, I had not thought of becoming a librarian.
But with the opportunity suddenly in front of me, knowing that I
definitely liked the work and was not so sure of teaching, I went
after it. Eventually, I received a certificate in librarianship in

Dornin: June, 1922. There were two or three jobs open on the library staff.
I had been a student assistant for seven years and worked in almost
every department. I hoped for one of the jobs, but Mr. Leupp said
his library "was not a finishing school for Mr. Mitchell's library
students." So, I had to get out and "cut my library teeth" on a
job outside.

Riess: And when did you get back to Berkeley?

Dornin: In February, 1926, there was a senior assistant job in the catalog
room. I was still in my twenties, and it was unusual nobody was a
senior assistant at that time until she was thirty-five years old
but I think that Miss Gunthorp was behind it.

Riess: And were you invited to join the Women's Faculty Club, as a senior
assistant librarian?

Dornin: Yes. But this was one thing that I thought was strange about the
club: they were so keen on getting things done for the women,
but they were awfully snooty about who came into the club. The
junior assistants were not invited. But I was invited.

Riess: Was it a formal invitation?

Dornin: No, I think Miss Christine Price, who was also a senior cataloger,

came and asked me if I wouldn't like to join. But at the time I was
supporting my mother, taking care of her, and keeping house, and
joining a club was too much. So I said, "No." I didn't join the
club until 1947, after my mother's death. As long as she lived, I
had her to take care of, so I didn't feel I could go into a club and
do club work.

2) Life Inside the Women's Faculty Club

Riess: What would club work be?

Dornin: They would ask you to be on committees, and when they had parties

they would expect you to attend. You'd have to take part in the club
activities.

Riess: The members were all involved?

Dornin: They had to be, to keep it going. They only had sixty-six members
to begin with, and that's not enough to keep a club going unless
they're all helping out some way or other with more than just dues.

Dornin: Of course, when they built the building they had the two floors for
living quarters . Then they began taking in some other people from
outside, people who came from other institutions on sabbatical
leaves, for instance. But in the beginning they must have all had
to help out, one way or another.

Very shortly after I returned to Berkeley, in the summer of
1926, the Department of Librarianship was advanced to graduate
status and became the School of Librarianship in the Graduate
Division, with Mr. Mitchell as dean of the school. While I don't
remember being conscious of this, Mr. Mitchell must have been working
half-time as head of the order department in the University Library
and half-time as the chairman of the Department of Librarianship,
for he now resigned from the library staff. We gave him a farewell
party which was held in the Women's Faculty Club.

It was a joint dinner for Mr. Mitchell and Miss Pauline
Gunthorp who was retiring as head of the catalog department. I can
remember getting ready for that, because after all those years of
lettering on the back of books and things, I could print quite
nicely, so I printed all the place cards for the party. It was a
big party, and filled all the main dining room. I don't know
where the residents went! I laughs] But that's about the first time
I can really remember going inside the club.

Riess: When you felt free to join the club, did you immediately apply for
residence?

Dornin: Well, this was an accident, as so many of things in my life seem to
be. Miss Price was wanting to take three months leave and go to
Europe, and she wanted to sublet her room in the club. (She was
one of the few that went there to live.) So she came to me. She
had a very nice room very nicely furnished. She said, "I think you
would take care of my things, because I see that you take care of
your own things." She knew that my mother had died, just the end of
January, and she asked if I wanted to sublet her room for March,
April, and May. This was ideal for me.

The next day I went to see Mr. Donald Coney, who had succeeded
Mr. Leupp as head librarian, to ask if I could transfer my month's
summer vacation time to February, in order to clear the rented house
in which my mother and I had lived. Then I went across campus t=
the Women's Faculty Club to meet the manager, whose name " have
forgotten, although I can remember what she looked like, and to leave
an application for membership. (My membership card is dated Feb. 25,
1947 and is signed by Emily G. Palmer, secretary). All went we:
I moved out of my former home and into the Women's Faculty :iub on
the last day of February 1947, little thinking I would remain there
just three months short of twenty-five years.

Dornin: I already knew several of the residents in addition to Miss Price
Miss Ida Secrist, Mrs. Mary B. Davidson, Mrs. Amy B. Bumstead and
Miss Katherine R. Wickson. I was cordially welcomed, and very soon
I realized I liked the place immensely.

Riess : Mrs. Davidson was there.

Dornin: Yes, she had been assistant dean of women from 1911 on, but she
didn't live in the club in the early days.

Riess: What was she like?

Dornin: She had her way. Things that we did that she didn't like, she told
us so. Miss Stebbins went out in 1936 as dean of women, so Mrs.
Davidson had been dean of women for ten years in 1946. So, you see,
the power was there. Oh, you always had to think what Mrs. Davidson
would like!

Now, for instance, the cat came there after I had been there a
while, Hepzibah. Well, I love cats, and she was obviously very
pregnant, and very young, not even a year old, I think. Poor thing
had no home. My heart just went out to her, and two or three of the
other women, same way. Se we began feeding Hepzibah.

Then, it turned out that Mrs. Davidson liked horses and dogs,
but she disliked cats, so she wasn't going to have Hepzibah around.
I said, "If we keep her outdoors can't we have her?"

"Well, how are you going to keep her outdoors?"

"We just won't let her in the house. We'll feed her outdoors."
We had a garden tool room in the basement, under the side porch, and
I said, "Couldn't she stay there? I'll make a bed for her in the
garden room" Well, Mrs. Davidson gave in. But that was one incident.
We always consulted Mrs. Davidson before we made any changes in any
rules or regulations or anything.

Riess: Did you meet and make decisions as a group?

Dornin: Not formally. We talked things over among ourselves. After dinner
we'd go in the living room and sit there and talk. It would be
always on the spur of the ^oment. But every decision went through
the Board of Directors. We residents would submit something to the
Board of Directors that we'd like to see changed or that we'd like
to add .

Riess: But you would act as a group, rather than individuals?

Dornin: Not formally, in the sense of putting up a notice calling a meeting,
but casually after dinner. While we all ate dinner about the same
time, we didn't all eat at the same table. We did have a Family
Table. You've heard about that. They still have it. But there
were all sorts of groupings about the room, even some women who
perhaps had some reading to finish before an evening seminar and
wanted to sit alone.

The Family Table was intended for the residents who liked to
sit together in a friendly group. The seats were usually filled,
but not always by the same people, for outside members were welcome,
if there was room when they came in. It was a case of "First come,
first seated."

In conversations matters might come up about the club house,
and here is where there would be a division of interest. Naturally,
the outside members and the temporary members would not be as
interested in household matters as the permanent members, so instead
of boring them, one of us would speak up, "Oh, let's talk about that
after dinner."

Riess : And the women who were not residents?

Dornin: They would not stay. They would go to their homes, or very often
they might have a meeting on the campus. That would be one of the
reasons they had come to dinner .

Riess: Was there any effort made to have at least one resident a member of
the board?

Dornin: I don't think it was deliberately done. It very often happened.

Riess: I love the Hepzibah story. Were there ever any other contretemps
like that?

Dornin: She lived there sixteen years, and we let her have three sets of
kittens, we gave her a chance to know what motherhood was like,
[laughs] We didn't have any more animals after her.

Riess: With people living in such close quarters for so long were there
problems of noise, odd habits, smoking?

Dornin: I don't remember anything of that sort when I first went there. All
the women had been there for quite a while and such problems had been
settled.

When I first went there, it was the ideal solution for me. I
had looked for apartments in Berkeley, but it was awfully hard to
find a place to live just then for it was right after World War II
and all the Gl's were coming backthe town was swarming with them.

Dornin: So I went to the manager after I knew I liked the club, and asked if
there would be a chance to come in as a regular resident after Miss
Price came back in June. It seemed there was one resident who was
finishing a sabbatical leave from another university, but she would
not be leaving until the end of July. There was one small room which
had windows only to the north and was generally used as a guest room.
The manager thought I might be allowed to use that for the month of
July, if the Board of Directors accepted me as a full time resident.
Then, I could move in the bigger room in August. By this time,
other members of the club had met me, and I guess I fitted in. If
the board had anyone on a waiting list I don't know, for I was
accepted.

I had the room over Mrs. Davidson's, the northwest corner, with
a view of Strawberry Creek and the men's club, and the garden. It
was a very nice room, a single, and I shared a bath with Agnes
McLellan, who was in the Department of Home Economics. We got along
perfectly all right, only Agnes would go home in the summer and so
I always had these strangers to share with during the summer sessions.
Then in the summer of 1950 Christine Price retired and went to live
in the Sequoias, Portola Valley. She had a room on the northeast
corner, a single with a bath, so I asked for it and I got it.

Riess: Who were your very good friends in the club at that point?

Dornin: My best friend in the club all along was Lucille Czarnowski. She

was a teacher of dance in the Physical Education Department for Women.
She was a senior supervisor that was what they were called.

Riess: Do you have any recollections of great highs and lows in food and
management over the years?

Dornin: The food, I think, was pretty steady , reasonably good.

Riess: You had lunches and dinners there.

Dornin: Oh, I just lived there, morning, noon, and night.

Riess: New managers must have influenced some sorts of change in cuisine.

Dornin: Well, I'm not hard to please when it comes to food. To me it was
good.

The only thing I can remember with managers was when we got the
[Gaston] Abbos. Then it was a little troublesome, because that was
the first time we'd ever had a man living in the club. We had a
student houseboy down in the basement, but he came and went through
his own door . But Mr . Abbo , and Mrs . Abbo , took two rooms and made
them into an apartment. And Abbo was around the place all the time,
and he was a Frenchman [laughs]. We had a little trouble getting
used to Mr. Abbo.

Riess :

Dornin:

Riess :

Dornin:

As residents were you aware of the financial chaos under the Abbo
regime?

Yes, but I was on the board then, so I knew what was going on. I
think if I had been just living there well, I don't know. Of course
those things spread around the house, and it was talked about, but
I don't think I would have worried about it.

Getting back to the residents.
Smoking? Drinking?

I asked you about noise and so on?

Well, considering there were twenty-four residents in the house, all
busy people, coming and going their various ways, I would say it was
remarkably peaceful. However, it was a wooden building and when it
was put up, perhaps there were not funds for the extras, such as
sound proofing, for the walls and floors could have been thicker.
I lived in two different rooms on the third floor at opposite ends
of the building. In each case, the woman underneath me was quiet in
her movements. However, I knew when she had company, or was talking
on the phone. I couldn't understand the words 7 but the sound of
voices was audible. The same with the radio. I think all the women
were conscious of this, and tried to be considerate of each other,
not talking loudly in the halls, or turning a radio up to a high
pitch.

It was outside that there was chaos! For between the late 1940s
and the late 1960s, the university was catching up on a building
program that had been postponed during the decade of the Great
Depression of the 1930s, and the five years of World War II immediately
following. All around the northern, eastern, and southern sides of
the campus there was steel and concrete construction going on, but
it was worst in the central campus, by the two faculty clubs, for
there the original buildings had to be demolished to make room for
the bigger, new buildings, and some of those had been very solidly
built of brick, and were hard to knock down.

There were no problems with smoking that I can remember. While
a number of the residents did smoke, they were considerate of those
who did not, and when they were in the building confined it to their
rooms. While I was there, although there were no signs posted,
there was no smoking in the public rooms of the first floor.

As to drinking for the first few years I was there, if any of
the residents did like a cocktail, or a glass of sherry before
dinner, she was very discreet about it, for I never knew who she
was. Certainly, I never saw alcohol on the tables in the main
dining room, or served in the lounge. But somewhere along in the
mid-1950s, the attitude toward wine at meals began to change. It
may have been due to the influx of university people from western
Europe to whom wine was as customary a beverage at dinner as

Dornin: water was to an American. Exactly when it first began, or who

started it, I have forgotten. But once started, it gradually spread,
and by the end of that decade, it was no longer unusual. However,
all the years I was there, I don't think the club itself bought and
served wine, or any other alcoholic drink. Those who wanted it,
bought it, brought it in, served and took away the empties. This
was to keep temptation away from the student help in the kitchen
and dining room, so I understood.

Riess: In general people worked well together?

Dornin: Yes, very. Of course, in the daytime we were all away, all working.

Riess: Did people keep track of each other? For instance, what if someone
had been absent at breakfast?

Dornin: Oh yes, if you didn't come to breakfast, somebody would come looking
for you, either one of your best friends, or the manager. In fact,
the first day I was there the manager came upstairs to take me down
to breakfast to introduce me at the breakfast table. A new member
was always introduced .

3) Committee Work

Riess: You were a member of the club's library committee. What did you do?

Dornin: Yes, and it's funny, I can't seem to remember buying any books for
that library, at all! But people gave us books, the members of the
club, and people outside, not residents, but faculty members. I
remember Miss [Hope] Gladding, for instance, was always giving us
books. Part of the work of the library committee was to keep the
books in order. So once a week or so I'd "read the shelves" to see
that everything was in place. We didn't have rules about times [of
borrowing] so they kept them out as long as they pleased, which
could be unfortunate. So we would write the borrower a note asking
her to please bring it back because so-and-so would like to read it.

Riess: And you were on the house committee.

Dornin: That was a committee to see that the rules of the house are observed,
to see that people got along, if there are quarrels [laughs]. Or if
there was some question about a leak in the roof, the house committee
would take that in hand, you see, tell the manager to get a plumber.

Riess: You were on a committee in 1958 to consider some question of length
of residence. What was the issue there?

Dornin: What came up in 1958? We had one dear, elderly woman, Miss Sarah

Davis, who had been in the Physical Education Department for Women.
She was in her eighties, and I think we were getting worried about
her. See, we didn't have any medical service or anything like that,
We were right across the street from Cowell Hospital, but we didn't
have any connection with Cowell. I think it may have been a matter
of should we allow people to stay in the club past the time of
retirement, because there had been several women up to that time
who did stay well past the time of retirement.

That's one of the reasons I got out myself when I did, because
I just had that feeling of the writing on the wall, so to speak:
"I wish Miss Dornin would hurry up and leave, so we don't have to
ask her to."

Riess :
Dornin;
Riess :
Dornin:

Riess:

Dornin:

Riess :

Dornin:

Rj.es s :
Dornin:

What year was that?
In October 1971.

lot of things were happening in those years.

This was when they were beginning to talk about letting men in the
club, which I didn't like. I wasn't against men coming there for
dinner, but I didn't want them living in the club.

In February 1971 you were on a committee to consider having a center
for continuing opportunities for women [located] in the Women's
Faculty Club.

Oh, they were to have an office, yes. Yes, but to have that coming
and going all that noise!

Your committee approved it.

Let me see those minutes, [reads] Well, I guess we did, all right.
But where could we ever have put them?

There must have been other things besides the handwriting on the
wall, besides just the fact that I was getting too old to stay,
because I was definitely getting unhappy.

Would you describe some of the club nights, the parties and dinners?

Oh, the annual dinners were great fun, especially as long as Miss
Stebbins was the chairman. She was the chairman for a long, long
time. We always wore full evening dress to the annual dinners. She
would come in, and we'd be sitting there, all of us with our very
best clothes, with a new hairdo and everything else, and she would
stand up there and look over us all and before she said anything
[formal] about welcoming, she would say, "I have never seen such a
wonderful-looking group of women." Then she would go on with the
business. After she stopped, the later presidents of the club took
over, but they never had quite the same spirit that Miss Stebbins had.

Riess: I thought Miss Stebbins was president only until 1941.

Dornin: Yes, but she was chairman of the dinner for quite a while afterward.

Of course, we were all just fixed up to the nth degree. After
she stopped being chairman we kept on having evening clothes for a
couple of years, and then somebody came in a dress that was to here
(midcalf) and well, the formal dressing just went down. Gradually.

Riess: As well as those traditions, you also had holiday traditions in the
club, didn't you?

Dornin: Yes, on Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. Breakfast

on these mornings was a festive occasion, prepared and served by the
residents themselves in the lounge before a crackling fire.

Card tables were placed together in a square "C" before the
fireplace. Dennison paper tablecloths and napkins, with designs
appropriate to the season, and lighted candles gave a holiday
atmosphere .

We did not attempt a fancy breakfast, but touched up familiar
dishes by marinating grapefruit halves in apple cider overnight, and
topping each one with a maraschino cherry. Eggs were scrambled with
cream, and hot cross buns, or some variety of sweet rolls, warmed in
the oven, substituted for toast.

With the maids and kitchen staff on holiday too, we had the
place to ourselves, and became an extended family having a whale of
a good time. The building usually cleared on the afternoons and
evenings of the main holidays, but Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve
often found six or eight residents with nowhere to go. About eight
o'clock a fire would be started in the lounge fireplace. When it
had burned down to hot coals, we would assemble to pop corn (often
a pastime new to a foreign resident), drink apple cider, listen to
the holiday music on the radio, and talk of Christmas and New
Year's traditions in other lands. Off to bed eventually, closer
friends, with happy memories to cherish.

4) Special Visitors to the Club

Riess: What about other dinners and special events?

Dornin: Now and again there would be some famous woman come to the campus
whom we wanted to entertain. She was lecturing on the campus and
we wanted to do something, so we would have a dinner.

The woman who wrote Mary Poppins [Pauline Travers] came to the club
and stayed with us a few days about a year or so before I left.
She came to the campus because she was giving lectures on folklore.
I asked her, so long as she was with us, if one of the nights when
she was free from lecturing, she would sit in the living room and
talk to us, "Just talk to us, tell us about yourself and what you've
done, how you wrote Mary Poppins and so on."

Well, she was a charming woman. We sat round the fireplace.
The girls came downstairs. This was no fancy party, we just talked.
We asked her questions, and I told her some of the folklore of the
campus, which she hadn't heard. She told us how she had become
interested in folklore and so on. It was one of the most delightful
evenings we had in the whole time I was there! So much better than
a formal party.

Do you recall other interesting visitors?

[following material added later] Since I had not traveled widely
before coming to the Women's Faculty Club, one of the most attractive
things about it to me was the chance to meet women from other parts
of the United States and from abroad who were temporary residents.
"Temporary" meant anywhere from a six weeks summer session to four
years required for a doctorate.

When I first arrived in 1947, these were mostly women in
mid-career who needed advanced university training in order to
compete for promotion. They were not all in academic fields, however,
Some were employed by business corporations and were hopefully
climbing the executive ladder. They came from countries that had
not been battered by World War II the United States, Canada and
South America.

With the 1950s, the tide seemed to turn more towards university
women from western Europe. They were apt to be younger, some still
graduate students in their own universities. They had been awarded
grants established for research projects, especially in public health
and social welfare, and they registered in these two campus schools,
both of which seemed to be well known and highly respected worldwide.

From 1960 on, women began to arrive from Southeast Asia, not in
the numbers the European women had come, but more than Asian women
had previously. We had residents from Cambodia, Thailand, and
Malaya, in addition to Japan and Korea. Again, they registered in
the School of Public Health, and were supported by grants.

All these women from Europe and Asia were astonishingly
proficient in speaking English. It may have been one of the reasoi ,
for their being chosen for grants in the first place. It was
certainly the main reason for the quick formation of friendships
and the lively and interesting conversation around the Family Table.

Dornin: They found the Berkeley campus an exciting place to be during those
years, for the university was one of the leaders in developing uses
for atomic energy. Hardly a day seemed to pass without the
announcement of a new discovery, or a breakthrough in some branch
of learning.

They also found California lived up to the brag in genial
climate and scenic beauty, but that there were surprises. One of
these was the vast distances (to them) Californians drove so
matter-of-factly, when they were taken on a weekend outing to Yosemite,
Lake Tahoe, or the Mendocino redwoods.

There was the middle-aged professor from the University of
Madrid, who was resident during a fall semester when California had
a championship football team which won the bid to the Rose Bowl
game on New Year's Day. The campus was in a froth of excitement.
She could understand this among the students, but why the faculty
and staff, adult individuals with a serious purpose in life, seemed
to be similarly infected was beyond her. Then she heard us planning
on staying overnight in Santa Barbara on the trip to and from the
game. Her eyes widened. "How far is this Pasadena from Berkeley?"
she asked. Someone shrugged a casual, "Oh, four hundred miles."

"Four hundred miles!" (a pause while she mentally changed miles
into meters) "Why, that's the distance from Madrid to Paris, and
no one travels from Madrid to Paris and back for a football game!"

Summer sessions brought school teachers by the dozen to Berkeley,
mainly from the United States. Nearly always there were nuns from
the College of Holy Names in neighboring Oakland, so we were
accustomed to the sight of them on the campus.

However, in the summer of 1960, we were not prepared to have one
in residence from a convent in Illinois. She was pleasant, although
sedate in manner, and at first we were awkward, feeling she
expected certain courtesies with which we were not familiar, other
than addressing her as "Sister." Probably, she was experienced in
adjusting to the outside world, for she went her way quietly and
we went ours. We became used to the swish of her long skirts in
the halls, and the sight of the black habit and stiff, white coif
at the dining table, but we were never quite at ease with her.

She must have found us agreeable, however, for the next summer
she was back with a companion. This one was short, plump, and
pretty, with a bright smile and a twinkle in her eye. She was a
teacher in a parochial high school for boys in New Jersey, and had
registered for a class in the elements of atomic energy, of all
things. When she told us at the end of the first day that she was
the only woman in the class, we wondered how she would get along.
Would the men shy away from her black habit, and leave her to solve

problem sets on her own? We needn't have worried. The grapevine
in due time informed us that she was the delight of the faculty, she
had an excellent mathematical mind and was one of the best students
in the class. Her quick wit kept tham all chuckling. She kept us
chuckling too, and that summer slid by all too quickly.

So, when the third summer brought us five nuns, the original
two, and three more from the Midwest, we took it in stride. But
this time, we were the ones to be surprised. There had been a
change of thought at the Vatican during the year. Only one of the
nuns wore the classic habit. The others were in greatly modified
habits that resembled the Quaker dress, or that of early New England
Puritans. In their relief from the weight of yards of heavy serge,
and the confinement of the starched coif that permitted them to
see only straight ahead, they acted almost like girls.

Not that they forgot their religious duties. I would be nearly
ready to go down to breakfast and would glance out my north window
to see them returning from early mass at the Newman Club, the student
Catholic chapel, which was then located north of the campus.

In those days, there was a small statue of St. Francis of Assisi
in the back garden. His cupped, outstretched hand made a drinking
fountain for the birds. The nun still in the old-time habit asked
me if I would take a picture of her beside the statue. She was a
tall, heavy-set woman, and St. Francis was dwarfed beside her, but
we went ahead. The picture proved to be a good portrait and her
mother, to whom the picture was sent, was pleased. But I wondered
if the nun, in her letters home, had not been too enthusiastic
about this club in which she was spending the summer in the Wild
West and the mother needed reassurance her daughter was still
within saintly influences.

By the time the summer of 1963 rolled around, college campuses
were beginning to simmer with what was to become the infamous Free
Speech Movement. One disturbance after another continued all through
the remainder of the 1960s and our religious residents were seen no
more.

As residents, when there was someone new, who was out here for a few
months for research or something, did you reach out and draw that
person in?

Well, the atmosphere of the club was the minute they got there,
the first dinner they had with us, or the first breakfast, why they
were friends. We went and talked in their rooms; they came to our
rooms .

Dornin: There was only one person that we ever had with whom we really had
trouble, a poor overweight soul who wanted to study for a Ph.D. in
biology. This woman, the first thing she did when she moved in was
to fill the service refrigerator on her floor with food. She was
eating all the time, a compulsive eater! She was unpleasant about
everything. When she didn't make her grades to get her Ph.D.
candidacy, everyone was "agin" her.

She had a room that didn't have a large enough easy chair, so
I went downtown to try and buy a larger chair. I got her an over
stuffed chair. But it rocked, and she didn't like that. I also got
a cover for her bed, to replace one she didn't like, and she didn't
like it either!

5) Friends and Residents

Riess:
Dornin:

Riess :
Dornin:
Rip.ss :
Dornin:

Who comes to mind instantly in your happy memories of the club?

Well, of course Margaret Murdock. She did everything she could
possibly do for the club. After her retirement, she worked in the
office; she did things outside to help out the club, such as
fundraising. She lived there for a while. I think she would have
stayed there, except she liked to play the piano, and she always
played it on Saturday afternoon. Well, this may have been a point
of dissension during a period before I came, because she used to
play, and some woman, perhaps somebody above her because the piano
was in the main room where it is now this person complained that
every Saturday afternoon was "full of Bach."

So, you think of Margaret Murdock.

She comes first. Then the other is "Smitty" [Josephine Smith].

People actually called her "Smitty?"

We always called her "Smitty,"
the woman she lived with was
by their first names. "Smitty
Christmas cards to "Smitty and
the women's advocates [means,
women only] . When the club
there. It was her field, you
all about budgeting. She was

never Josephine. Everybody did. And
Albro" [Mary Albro], Never called them
and Albro." In fact, I addressed
Albro, Inc." She was another one of
advocate of keeping the club for
needed a bookkeeper, Smitty was right
see, in the university. She knew
President Sproul's budget clerk.

Riess:

Are there any others that you think of?

Dornin: Marian Moore. She worked over in Cowell Hospital with the students,
social worker I think is what they called her. She did beautiful
sewing, and she would make us curtains; if our curtains began to
wear out, she would make us a whole new set of curtains for the
living room. She was always doing something of that sort.

Really, there were dozens who were especially interesting.
Let me mention some as examples or types of what kind of people we
had, rather than as better than others. I hope people who read this
history will understand what I mean.

For instance, we had Miss Madi Bacon, who came from Vienna
where everyone seems to be born talented in music. Madi became
interested in helping the San Francisco Opera Company in training
a few young boys to sing in the two or three operas which contained
parts for young voices. They did so well that before it seemed
possible Madi was the founder, director and conductor of the San
Francisco Boys Chorus, now one of the city's treasured institutions.

Miss Chiyoko Tokunaga from Japan came to Berkeley to study
genetics. She remained on the campus to become a research associate
under Kurt Stern in the University's Virus Laboratory. She bought
a home in north Berkeley and continues to serve the University as
an interpreter and campus escort for distinguished Japanese visitors.

Dr. Ruth Stewart, a native of upstate New York and a trained
nurse, who had spent several years as a Methodist medical missionary
in Korea, lived at the club when she was at Berkeley to study for a
Ph.D. in public health. Upon receiving her degree, she returned to
Korea as an associate professor in the Department of Preventive
Medicine and Public Health at Yonsei University. She has also
become noted as the author of two books of short stories which
reflect the resilience of the Korean people under all sorts of
conditions .

Another illustrious resident was the Honorable Elsa Mois, a
lawyer from Denmark, who spent some time at Berkeley's Boalt Hall
of Law. A year after she returned to Denmark, we received word she
had been appointed to a judgeship.

Riess: The name Mary Floyd Williams came up in a letter in 1946 about

whether or not to floodlight the club for protection of residents
coming home at night.

Dornin: Miss Mary Floyd Williams, now she was a character! She was here
when I came. She wrote books. She wrote A Book, I should say!
(Fortune, Smile Once More, a story about early San Francisco)
Mary Floyd I think was one of the women who they brought in from the
Town and Gown Club very early because they needed more members.

Dornin: I knew Mary Floyd! She was writing this book, and she had a room
over the garden and you'd hear her typewriter going. You'd hear
"tap tap tap tap tap tap" and you'd look up and see Mary Floyd
working away. She was an elderly woman by the time I got there,
maybe in her middle-eighties. She hadn't been away from the club
too long when she died, at ninety-something.

Riess: Another resident in 1946 was Miss Agnes McLellan.

Dornin: Yes, as I have said, she was my bathroom mate in the beginning.
She was in home economics, She was very nice, a sweet girl, but
not a lively one. We lost her in 1953, when most of the College of
Agriculture departments, including her field, home economics, were
moved to the Davis campus .

Riess: Miss Edith Pickard.

Dornin: Yes, she was a teacher over at San Francisco State. She was a

regular member, but she commuted back and forth to San Francisco,
until the college moved way out to Stonestown. She was trying to
get a Ph.D. in zoology; that's how she got into the club in the
beginning, as a Ph.D. student. She was trying very hard to get
this Ph.D. with Professor [Charles A.] Kofoid. Well, he died just
after she completed her thesis and none of the other professors
felt he knew enough about the particular fish she was writing about
for her thesis, and none of them would take her on, so she never got
her Ph.D. I think it was one of the meanest things that the faculty
did. They could have accepted what she had done; even if they didn't
know every little tiny thing about that fish, they must have known
enough about fishes in general to know whether she was doing a good
piece of work or not. And certainly Kofoid wouldn't have taken her
on as a Ph.D. student if she wasn't a fine student! Well, that's
where your macho comes in again; a man student would have been
helped someway to get that degree.

Riess: It must have been interesting to have that mix of students with the
residents.

Dornin: It was, because you learned a lot about what it meant to drudge
through a Ph.D. They had very little social life.

Riess: Was there a curfew for the club?

Dornin: No, we all had keys. But there was a woman professor who came

from England one summer who came in at two o'clock in the morning.
[laughs] She came from one of the women's universities connected
with Oxford. She was well known in her field and she was taken out
by the entire group of the younger English professors, and I think
they had taken her over to North Beach and gone from one place to
another, and she was so drunk! It was terrible.

Dornin:

Riess :
Dornin:

Riess:

Dornin:

We heard her coming home. An automobile drove up, and we heard her
getting out of the car. "I can walk myself." Then the men trvjaj
to pursuade her to let them help her in the house. Finally she fat
in the house, and then she had to come up two flights of stairs.
We could hear her coming up the stairs, thump, thump, thump.
Staggering down the hall. And then into her room, bang!

Well, of course everyone was scared to go in, but what if
had hurt herself, or hit her head on the table, or something. SB
we went downstairs to the office, got the master key, and peeked it,
and she was lying flat on the floor. Oh, my gosh! That was one rf
the meanest tricks they could have done, a decent woman, to take ier
and do something like that. Probably one drink was enough.

She was a very interesting woman, but eccentric in her
appearance, which was probably what led the men on.

Did she come down to breakfast the next day?

No, and the maid didn't know anything about it and went up to clem
her room in the middle of the morning and she was still lying there.
[laughs] It was awfully funny, but at the same time it was kind of
shocking that the faculty would be so mean to do a thing like that.

We have just a minute more,
memories of the club?

Anyone else come to mind in your

Mrs. Amy Bumstead. After Mr. Mitchell became the dean of the
Library School in 1926, Mr. Frank M. Bumstead became the head of the
order department. About fifteen years later, he died of tubero-
losis, which was unfortunate. It was a very, very happy marriage.
After he died, she [Amy Bumstead] began working for the ASUC, and
she came to live at the Women's Faculty Club.

She was a darling, a dear little woman, a little bit of a tfeatg.
Her brother was Professor Harold Bruce of the English Department.
She was just all heart, would do anything for anybody. She had z
car, and I didn't, so anytime I wanted to go anywhere, she'd drim.
In fact, she drove me on one trip way up into Canada. Because she
was so kind, other people naturally reflected that. You felt,
goodness, she's so nice, I've got to be, I can't be unpleasant Ji
the face of this wonderful woman, whio* she was. The early
1950s, when they were building Carmel Valley Manor, was the time
that she decided it was time that she left [the Women's Faculty
Club].

100

6) Early Surroundings of the Women's Faculty Club
[added later by Miss Dornin]

Dornin: I got to thinking of how crowded the area about the Women's Faculty
Club is now, and how open it used to be, and I thought you might
be interested to know that the club had a street number once. When
the Women's Faculty Club was built in 1923, it was assigned the
address "2200 College Avenue," although its main entrance faced
south on Sylvan Way .

Current maps of the city of Berkeley showed a road entering
the northeastern part of the University of California campus from its
boundary street , Hearst Avenue at La Loma Avenue . The road passed
Founders' Rock, and descended steeply past the Hearst Mining Build
ing and the original Chemistry Building to cross the campus bridge
at Strawberry Creek and meet the first block of College Avenue,
the southern boundary of the campus .

The first block of College Avenue extended south to Bancroft
Way. Here, the street made a twenty-foot jog to the west and
continued south in a straight line to the Berkeley-Oakland line.

Since Berkeley's numbering system for north-south streets
begins at the city's north boundary and proceeds southward, the
number "2200" indicated College Avenue began in the center of the
city.

Sylvan Way was a narrow road which ran west from College
Avenue along side the original southern boundary of the campus to
meet Telegraph Avenue where it began at Sather Gate.

For some years, the University had been gradually purchasing
the land between its southern boundary and Bancroft Way and west of
College Avenue. When the Women's Faculty Club was built, the
university already owned all of the west side of the first block
of College Avenue. Across Sylvan Way, at 2220 College Avenue, was
the students' infirmary, a former private residence remodeled and
enlarged for this use.

Beyond the infirmary lay the women's playing field and swimming
pool, both under the jurisdiction of the Deparr*r.ant of Physical
Education for Women. The playing field was surrounded by a high,
board fence; the swimming pool was indoors in an annex to Hearst
Hall, the original gymnasium for women.

Beautiful Hearst Hall, designed by Bernard Maybeck, one of
Berkeley's most famous architects, had been burned to the ground,
presumably by an arsonist, in the spring of 1922. It's burned-out
foundations were still evident.

101

Dornin: The corner block of land extending down Bancroft Way a couple of
hundred feet was occupied by the university tennis courts. The
east side of the block was still private property, occupied by family
homes and a fraternity house. The street still belonged to the City
of Berkeley.

On September 17, 1923, a third of Berkeley, north of the
university campus and east of Shattuck Avenue, was devastated by a
raging fire, driven by a fierce north-east wind. As this part of
the city was rebuilt, and a considerable number of apartment houses
replaced single family homes, the traffic along College Avenue and
across the upper campus road increased steadily until it became a
noisy throughfare.

To the residents of the Women's Faculty Club, once secure in
their peacefull dell, this was a catastrophe. Miss Christine Price,
of the university library staff, would come to work complaining
bitterly of her loss of sleep due to the shifting into low gear,
particularly by trucks as they crossed the Strawberry Creek bridge
and began the long grind up the steep slope to Founders' Rock.

There were no funds for new road construction during the
Depression years of 1930, and those of World War II that followed
immediately. It was not until 1946 uhat money became available,
and the campus road was realigned to the left as it passed Founders'
Rock, and contoured on a much easier grade directly below the Greek
Theatre, and around the Big Chill to meet the first block of
Piedmont Avenue, the street east and above College Avenue. Named
Gayley Road for a former, famous campus professor of English
literature, it became the permanent access road across the upper
campus, and peace returned to the Women's Faculty Club. The old
road was torn up, and the terrain it occupied was bulldozed into
sites for new science and engineering buildings .

Meanwhile, changes had been taking place on the first block of
College Avenue. William Randolph Hearst, son of Mrs. Pheobe A.
Hearst, had given the University funds for a new gymnasium for women,
in memory of his mother. A site for this was chosen on Bancroft
Way, opposite Bowditch Street, and it was completed in 1927.

The old swimming pool and athletic field which had been in use
by the women students ever since Hearst Hall had burned, were
abandoned and unused for several years. In 193A, they were
converted into a laboratory for research in erosion and tidal
problems of beaches, harbors and rivers. This was called the
Hydraulic Model Basin.

102

Dornin: In 1930, through a bequest from the estate from Ernest V. Cowell,
class of 1880, matched with a state bond issue, the University had
been enabled to purchase land on the east side of College Avenue and
erect the southern half of Cowell Memorial Hospital. On its comple
tion, the students' infirmary was razed, and a much needed concrete
building, called for want of a better name the Temporary Classroom
Building (now Minor Hall), was built.

One by one, the pioneer Berkeley homes on the east side of the
block had become vacant as their owners passed away, and the property
had either been bequeathed to, or purchased by the University. The
houses were used as quarters for a spate of "institutes, centers,
and bureaus" which sprang up following World War II.

The street itself remained unchanged, and open to traffic
within the campus until the late 1950s and 1960s, when the campus
massive building program brought plans for Wurster Hall and Calvin
Hall, which effectively closed it off. Today, all that remains of
the 2200 block of College Avenue is the rectangular parking space
bordered by Cowell Hospital, Calvin Hall, Wurster Hall, Minor Hall,
and the Women's Faculty Club, while Sylvan Way is only a name on an
old-time map.

Transcriber: Suzanne Riess
Final Typist: Nicole Bouche

JOSEPHINE MILES

102a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Josephine Miles

1) The Forties English Department, and the Women's Faculty Club 103

2) The Dinner Club 1 6

3) Academic Women 107

4) The Sixties Saving the Club 110

5) The Seventies Merger Meetings and Other Meetings 115

6) The Club for Now, and the Future 119

Josephine Miles, Professor of English, 1957

103

Josephine Miles

November 24, 1981

Interviewed in the Private Dining Room of the Women's Faculty Club at Lunch

1) The Forties English Department, and the Women's Faculty Club

Riess: Before you joined the Women's Faculty Club, what did you think of it?

Miles: I never heard of it.

Riess: What did you think of women faculty, in fact?

Miles: Not very much. I guess, probably, that is a good place to start.

When I came to Berkeley in 1934, I had good friends who had
come up here to do graduate work. I hadn't intended to do graduate
work. There were women professors at UCLA, all of whom encouraged
me not to do graduate work; they said I was too poetic a type, and
not scholarly enough. So, the support I got was from men, and from
the men who were my colleagues at UCLA, students who came up to
Berkeley.

Then I had some operations that did not work out. I was kind
of forlorn, and my friends said, "Well, come up and get your M.A. at
Berkeley. Maybe you could get a job doing research or something
like that."

All in the thirties, I never heard of the Women's Faculty Club.
I didn't know it existed. I could have, but did not get any help
from women "In that time, like women deans or what have you. There
were no women in the English Department at all. The English Depart
ment was extremely nice to me. As you know, in 1940 they asked me
if I would like to try to teach. I was very admiring of about half
of the men in the department. I was very loyal to them. So I still
paid no attention to anything which made me think of the Women's
Faculty Club.

Riess: When you say that you did not get any help from women deans, had you
sought help from women deans?

104

Miles: To some degree, yes, in little things, like parking stickers and so
on. The women, as I remember them in terms of officialdom, were
rather militant, rigorous not very bending. I provided a lot of
exceptions that they did not want to have to face. It was so wonder
ful that the men in the English Department were not like that. They
let nothing stop them when they decided I should try to teach here.
Then they did all of these things for me so that I could try.

Oh, it must have been about four years later I began teaching
here in 1940 maybe three or four years later, there was a very nice
woman across the hall from me in Wheeler. Her name was Pauline
Sperry. She was a professor in mathematics. She would drop by to
say hello and ask me about my work. She became, really literally,
the first woman professional of any kind that had ever paid me a
good word. (Oh, Hildegard Planner, the poet, I should say, is
another one. She lived still down in Altadena at that time.)

Pauline was a little waspy creature, very brisk and militantly
anti-male, She kept telling me that I should join the Women's
Faculty Club, of which she was an officer.

I said, "No way, too many steps, too hard to get into. Besides,
I do not know' why anybody would want to belong to a women's faculty
club . "

Riess: Did you and she actually have discussions of male-female issues?

Miles : No , no .

Riess: When you say militantly anti-male, how?

Miles: She would barge up and down the hall saying, "Damn Professor So-and-
Sol" I would listen and laugh, that is all.

Then, we had a new chairman in the English Department, rather
inexperienced. He decided he would make things friendly. (The
English Department had been rather unorganized for quite a while,
which I did not know. To me, they seemed very nice.) The chairman's
name was Jim Cline. He said, "Well, let us have our meeting at the
Men's Faculty Club."*

As fate would have it, I was still in my office, ready to go up
there, and they asked me if I would carry the minutes up. So, I
carried the minutes and my helper carried me. Two other women who
were visiting went along. We had no permanent staff, nor was I. We
were all just visiting lecturers. We went up there, and they would
not let us in. I guess that begins my interest in the Women's Faculty
Club.

*The Faculty Club.

105

Riess : The men in the English Department had been just totally blind to that
possibility?

Miles: Yes, they had. They were very nice men, they just were not like

that. They did not belong to the Men's Faculty Club. There were,
you see, militants on both sides. I think that there were a number
of gays in the English Department. They paid no attention to the
Men's Faculty Club either. I mean, they had another little world of
their own. I did not bother them, and they did not bother me.

The macho men in the Men's Faculty Club, they later explained
we could not come in because we would have to pass a room in which
they would be wearing tee shirts, or underwear, BVD's, or whatever
it was in those days.

Riess: But usually the English Department faculty did not go up to The
Faculty Club.

Miles: No, no. They were very surprised. I just gave them the minutes and
went home. They phoned me later and said, "Oh, what a shame, blah,
blah, blah, We will not try that again, and so on." I did tell
this to Pauline Sperry, so that ignited the flames.

Riess: Did it ignite flames in you? Or was it just amusing?

Miles: No, it was amusing. Oh, I was a little angry, but not much. I mean,
you know, I knew lots of men. Lots of men professors were like that
too. So were a lot of my friends.

Let us put it this way, I still do not see why men should not
be able to get together if they want to without women if they just
had made it a little clearer. As it turned out, they would not let
any women in that club except in one room. They were very chilling
about it . That is why the women had to build a club . It was really
forced on them. I had not realized that before.

Then Pauline said, "Well, now you see you owe it to women to
join, even if you never come."

I said, "Okay. Tell me the dues, and I will give you the check,
but I am never coming." Not out of any principles, just that it was
nhysically hard.

106

2) The Dinner Club

Miles: Then she said, "We have this dinner club once a month in which we
pick people to give research papers, different women. There are
about twelve women and each one gives a research paper during the
year. Would you like to come to that?"

"Oh, great," I said, "I would love to come to that." So they
invited me. That was some of the most interesting stuff I have ever,
ever done .

Riess: That was a club within the club?

Miles: It was right here in this room. Yes, it was just a dinner club.

Riess: It was not open to just everyone in the Women's Faculty Club?

Miles: Well, it might have been. I do not even know. They invited me.

I do not know whether they would have invited others. I do not know
how they were comprised. You see, I did not ask many questions,
actually.

Riess: Did they have a name?
Miles : No .

I remember the first paper I heard was on the Anopheles mosquito
by some scientist, biologist. I went home and I told my family,
"This is where it is at, this Anopheles mosquito, the way you can
learn enough to know all [there is] about the Anopheles mosquito."
This is the first time I ever really got interested in research and
the whole of science. I had done it as a graduate student, but it
was all related to poetry, it related to my subject matter.

Riess: Poetry is so open ended.

Miles: That is right. It did not have this research aspect. Just to show
you how nice the men in the department were, J.S.P. Tatlock, who was
a rigorous bibliographer, and who felt that I should earn my living
working in encyclopedias at the Huntington which was a good practical
idea when I said that I did not want to work on the medieval Latin
dictionary, which was his baby, he walked up a steep hill to my
house bringing me all the medieval Latin stuff that he had found
in the Rolls Series that dealt with poetry.

Now, I think that is really creative scholarship! But it only
partly got to me. I knew he was kind, and I laughed about it and I
did it. But it was hearing these women talk about their research and
how exciting it was that really set off the firecrackers.

107

Riess: What other women can you remember in that group?

Miles: Oh, I am embarrassed to say that is the only one I can remember.

There was a doctor by the name of Joy Bishop I think that was her
name. She did a paper on something to do with doctoring. There
were three or four women from nutritional sciences. I just cannot
remember their names. Ruth Okey was one. They are now up at Davis,
if they have not retired. There was Alice Tabor in German. That
was the only arts one, or languages one. Everybody else was science.
I think Pauline Sperry, the mathematician, was quite a leading factor
in all this. Oh, yes, there was the famous Emily Huntington, the
economist. She was, of course, their social leader. Pauline was
just more of a little intellectual gadfly.

Riess : The reason there were not more from the arts or the humanities is
just because there were not any anyway?

Miles: There weren't any. Yes, that is part of it.

3) Academic Women

Miles: As I probably have explained in other talks at other times, in 1920,
when World War I was over, there was a great openness to women
professors. Women had been going to get Ph.D.'s while the men were
overseas. So here are these women Ph.D.'s, all being gung-ho to be
scholars. This is the time of the great Margaret Mead, the great
Ruth Benedict, Martha Beckwith probably other fields too, but I
happened to meet those anthropology women because they sort of
congregated out here.

They scattered through the countryside getting jobs. It was
very much, in a way, like my getting a job in 1940 because there was
another war coming along. Then most of those women were advanced,
as I was too, eventually. So, they became a solid force but a dated
one*. Let me say, unfortunately, they did not recruit women. They
themselves enjoyed being, I think, rather singular.

Riess: But they never felt themselves as underdogs in any way.

Miles: Well, I am not sure, because I did not talk to them about it. I

think they felt embattled. I cannot explain it, I was just so loyal
to my own colleagues. I felt they were embattled; I knew that they
had fascinating backgrounds. But I mean, I did not ask them for
their histories around here, whether they had felt hurt or demeaned.

108

Miles: All of this came to me later when I just had to join women's caucuses
because it was so clear that women were being unfairly treated. That
was very, very hard for me to accept. I just did not want to hear
about that, because I did not want to hear that some of these men
were pulling these fast ones.

You know, I think it was at one time in the 1960s that twenty
lecturers in the sciences were dismissed, but were told they could
reapply in the regular channels. (They had just been appointed as
lecturers.) When they applied to regular channels with all their
credentials and all their work and all their research, there was
always one clear negative voice to say "No." So, we did not have a
chance .

I saw a movie called "Zoot Suit" last night. It was very much
like the trial in "Zoot Suit." That is another point.

Riess : You have stated that men in your experience had been very supportive,
and women very non-supportive.

Miles: Also, this is what I found later to be the sad part, I was not

untypical; the women who were supported by the men did not want to
go ahead and support other women. I do not blame myself too much
because I did go out and work hard on the other side. We all gave
ourselves the impression that it was because we were so good that
the men supported us. You see, it was all self -f lattery .

Now, for example, I do not think this is fair or true, but one
of the deans of women told me once whichever one it was I forget,

one of the ones around here she said that I had put the cause of

women in education at the University back fifty years because my
presence did not raise the crucial issues of, you know, femininity
and so forth.

Riess: Well, that must have been a new breed of deans of women. Katherine
Towle, for instance, where would she stand on this?

Miles: Well, it was not she. She was a WAC, so she was used to these

different kinds. It was the one before her. But anyway, their
point was, and it turned out to be a true one, though it hurt my
feelings at the time, of course, that the role model issue is very
important. I did not provide a role model, you see.

Neither did Pauline, neither did most of these women, because
they were all exceptional in one way or another. We had no beauti
ful, urbane, widely-recognized women. Somebody who has somewhat
played that role lately is Marian Diamond. Even so, she is such an
exception to some degree, that you have to smile when you say it.

109

Miles: This kind of really top flight well, look at the trouble Rose Bird
is having.* I think she is very attractive and looks like a leader
to me .

Riess: What you are talking about is the degree of real femininity, or what?

Miles: Let us see, what would I say? The absence of threat to men was very
important. Most of these women that were in this group were no
threat to men for one reason or another, but they also just never
asked to be in men's groups. That is still fine with me.

Riess: Did they talk about any of these things as they sat around this
table?

Miles: No, no, not with me they did not. Lately, of course, in the 1960s
we talked about nothing else for ten years , or twenty years .

Okay, so the Women's Faculty Club then, that dinner meeting,
those were wonderful. For some reason, I do not remember why, but
they died out I guess somewhere at the end of the forties . In the
fifties, again, I never heard of the Women's Faculty Club. Pauline
was gone. All of these older women were gone.

They kicked the Nutrition Department up to Davis . I was on the
committee and they did it in a very unlegal fashion. They wanted to
get rid of all those women, because it was home ec but it really
was a woman's issue. [Clark] Kerr said they were not good enough
for Berkeley. Then he brought in a man nutritionist. Okay, all
right, I know. Ruth Okey was a nice homebody , you know. She did her
Ph.D. I remember they built a model house over there. Agnes Fay
Morgan, by the way, was a real big shot in all this. When Agnes Fay
Morgan retired or died, whappo , nothing was left of her empire. They
just wiped it out and sent it up to Davis. Even though the committee
I was on, everybody supported the keeping of it here, we woke up the
next year to find it was gone.

Riess: This is a trend in this university, to remove anything th?t is prac
tical, home economics, design, drama and the women tend to teach in
those fields.

Miles: In some of those fields, right.

Riess: You have pointed out that 16 percent of the tenured faculty were

women back in the 1940s as compared to some 3 percent in the early
1970s.

Miles: Isn't that frightful? Then in the 1950s everything was very dull.

California Supreme Court Justice

110

4) The Sixties Saving the Club

Miles: There was a woman whom you probably know, a real pillar of society

around here, by the name of Elizabeth Scott, in statistics. I asked
her advice about some statistics once and she was kind of interested
in what I was doing. We stayed in touch. She is someone you can
stay in touch with in terms of ideas. [Interruption to discuss
dessert]

She [Scott] looked me up and she said, "Have your heard about
all of .the terrible things that are happening at the Women's Faculty
Club? Emily Huntington is justly sick of the whole bit and nobody
is supporting it anymore. She is doing all of the work and a few of
the board members."

Riess: Emily Huntington was "justly sick of the whole bit?"

Miles: Yes, because nobody was doing any work. Mary Lou Norrie, in P.E.,
was the president. Now, this is all second hand because when these
old gals had gone, I didn't know who was around. Apparently the
story was that they were going to have a meeting to vote to give the
Women's Faculty Club to the university. The university had already
agreed that it was going to use it for carrels for the History
Department. They could easily and inexpensively make the whole
building over into carrels. History deeply needed carrels.

Riess: Everybody was so apathetic that Emily Huntington could by force of
her own personal persuasion just

Miles: Almost, almost.

Riess: What about all of those people who for years have used it as "the
club?"

Miles: That is not true during the fifties. It was very sluggish. One of
r!ie dangers during the fifties was that there were three or four
little old ladies who used the club as home. They lived here and
they used it in every way, and they did not pay much. These were
honored little old ladies and nobody knew what to do about them. So
they ran the club straight down the tube, i a m vague because, as I
say, I was not involved.

Whenever this was, I can figure it out, when did I write that
poem?

Riess: You wrote a poem about it?

Ill

Miles: Well, no, I wrote this poem called "Saving the Bay" when Elizabeth
Scott called me up. It was probably the early 1960s, I imagine.
She said, "Don't you think we ought to fight this? Emily Huntington
is tired and Mary Lou Norrie is not a fighter. Nobody else knows
what to do. The women faculty members do not and never have joined
this thing since the old group. It seems to me that it is important
in enough ways that we should try to do something."

We had by that time one tenured woman in the English Department,
named Anne Middleton. I called up Anne. I think I had gotten her
to join. So Anne and Betty and I went to this meeting as a group of
three. Boy, did we sabotage that poor meeting! It turned out the
people did not want to kill the club. They came to kill it because
the leadership said it was unviable. Nobody had come to you know,
you have a board meeting, nobody comes. You have a membership
meeting, nobody comes. You know, that can be pretty awful.

So we spoke up in the other direction and said what might be
done. We might get Pry tanean's help, we might get this women's
center's help. All of these new things were burgeoning on campus
with a consciousness of women in the women's lib sense, not in the
old scholarly sense . So we mentioned all of these things .

Then we had to vote. The score was something like, well, it
was very heavily on our side. Everybody was totally amazed. They
said to Elizabeth and Anne and me, "Well, great, you are now the
board of directors." None of us bought that. We were not that
type. We did not know what to do.

Riess : Did the residents join in on this? I mean, since you were on their
side in a way.

Miles: The residents were all about 103 years old. They were just hanging
on because they were not paying any money to stay here, or not much.
That is my impression. Now again, I have only been told that the
club in those years was ruined by the fact that when you came in
here you just saw people who were blind, deaf and dumb, and only
about seven of them. That is all there was around here, [laughter]

Riess: Oh dear! Of course that was a time in the 1960s when everything was
under attack. Maybe this was easily seen as sort of a sacrificial
lamb.

Miles: It was , it was. That is right. We were "doing our bit" by the
University giving them this space.

Now then, what happened, I do not know, because I really hid
out at that point. I did not come back. I think Betty did come
back and work. I am not sure about Anne.

112

Riess : So then, who took over?

Miles: I think maybe Betty did, some of it. You must talk to her.

Anyway, where I pick up again, say that is early sixties, I do
not pick up again until maybe ten years later.

Riess: Well, what about Prytanean and the women's center? How important is
that in the history?

Miles: Well, that is true, I was . In the sixties, the English Department
women joined together and created what they called the women's
caucus, in order to fight for the department to get more women in
the department. (Just parenthetically, I will say that they never
had to fight again. The department was just great. They always
voted for whatever they wanted. So within a few years we had twelve
women on the staff, and so on.)

Riess: Actually, I remember this from your oral history. This was a time
when you took leadership. People were outraged and hysterical. You
said, "Well, let us look at the facts."

Miles: Yes, "Let's take it easy." We did, we took it easy. I was planning
to have lunch today with one of those women and then she got called
away. So, that is why I have this free hour because we were going
to kind of reminisce. Her name is Dorothy Brown, and you might be
interested in talking to , her too, though this was not related to _
the club. She was on the women's studies side of it.

Riess: The women's caucus was just for the English Department, right?

Miles: Yes, and then also I mentioned those twenty lecturers in the

sciences, and a group of very fine scientific leaders had a kind of
underground women's movement to try to help them. We all failed on
that one. The cards were really stacked.

What I am trying to say here is that many of the things we then
tried were fund-raisers for women. We had them in the Women's
Faculty Club . I remember many times during the sixties coming in
here to poetry reading or some kind of colloquium, the type of thing
that you saw in the "Images of California."* We paid rent for those,
For the life of me I cannot remember who the manager was then. I
cannot remember what the finances were. We did have wine and cheese
and we did pay rent. There always were diapers on the staircases
because of the women's center. It became a babysitting center.
Nobody liked this very well .

*"Images of California," organized by Jim Hughes, 1978-79, from the
Institute of Governmental Studies, was a sequence of sessions with
speakers from varied humanities disciplines considering the common
theme of how California is perceived .

113

Riess: The Women's Center now housed in T-9 is such a different group.
What was the original women's center all about?

Miles: Well, you see, I did not come to any of those Prytanean meetings.
Riess: It was a child-care service, or what?

Miles: Yes, it became a child-care service. In other words, in my best

speculation but I am not the one to really ask but in my relation
to the Women's Faculty Club in the early sixties, we came to dinners
and banquets given by other departments for

other reasons like the Aesthetics Group met here. I do not remem
ber anything about the officers or anything about the finances
except that everyone was saying that this cannot go on. "We cannot
use the Women's Faculty Club as a babysitting service."

Prytanean, I think, had helped sponsor this, but then was
finding it was not working. Everybody was trying to get the T
building, which they did. So, when they got the T building, the
kids all cleared out and now we were left with not much of anything
again.

Riess: Brief tangent: why were you raising funds for women?

Miles: Because they were being eliminated around here.

Riess: You were raising funds to support positions?

Miles: Those twenty lecturers. We had some law cases.

Riess: Funds to fight the legal battle?

Miles: Well, it was not that much money. It was mostly funds to you know
how women are, it was to have cake sales, to give a party, to invite
the men so they would come and be friendly, you know, indirect, very
indirect.

Riess: You were still looking at it with a somewhat jaundiced eye, even
though you were participating in it.

Miles: Yes. I would never have done any of what now comes, which is from
the mid-sixties on, if it had not been for these half a dozen or so
of these great gals in the English Department who just came to me
and said I had to, just the way Pauline Sperry had. These women
were not especially scholars . They were women libbers and they
wanted rights for women in the English Department and in the univer
sity. Since I knew Elizabeth Scott, who supported them statistically
on anything they wanted to find out if she knew it was true, all of
our suspicions were statistically valid, I had that entre into
something that was important to them.

114

Riess : They were graduate students?

Miles: They were graduate students. They were just you know how that

accidentally happens a nice group of friends that worked together.
They got what they wanted in the department partly because I encour
aged them to be not too crabby about it partly because we had a
very nice committee with men on it as well as women. Okay, so then
we used the club a lot, just as a nice resource.

Everybody said how marvelous that this club is there. It is a
way of life which is nowhere else on campus. For very little money
we can come here and have poetry readings and music recitals and all
of these great things, and enjoy friends and just come for a cup of
tea. How marvelous! They all gave credit to Anne and Betty and me
for this because they had all heard that it had already been turned
into carrels .

So this went on for quite a long time. Then, I kept saying,
"But the faculty members, you do not join. How do you expect the
place to go on without you?" Well, they did not have the time, they
have to bring brown bag lunches . This has been our answer all the
time. "No, no, no time for clubbishness ."

The men's club, by the way, is not flourishing for clubbishness
either. It is just not that era. Well, then to go faster ahead

Riess: The men's club was not flourishing or is not flourishing?

Miles: Is not. It is ten or twenty thousand dollars in debt.

Riess: That is a statement of fact, that people do not have time?

Miles: That is the statement they give you.

Riess: What do you think about that?

Miles: Well, if I were Pauline Sperry I would not take "No" for an answer,

but I am not . I think all the women in the English Department should
say join. Even Anne Middleton is gone now because she has too much
else to do. [She's back!]

Riess : You would also say that all the women in the English Department are
overworked?

Miles: Yes, that is true, they are.
Riess: But they should join to support it?
Miles: It is only three dollars a month.

115

5) The Seventies Merger Meetings and Other Meetings

Miles: Somewhere around the early seventies, I get this phone call from Peg
Uridge, who was head of the circulation or something at the library.
All I knew about Peg Uridge is that I used to talk to her on the
phone about books sometimes . One time I was having dinner at a
Chinese restaurant and she recommended the pickles. In other words,
my only memory of what she looks like was those pickles.

I got this phone call saying, "Will you be on the board of the
Women's Faculty Club, because we are in terrible trouble and I don't
know how to handle it." She was a dominant administrator on the
whole campus so she jolly well should. She said, "Roger Heyns
persuaded one of the angels of Berkeley," one of the big whatever
[Strauss Associates].

Riess: The Haases.

Miles: Yes, "to donate money to refurbish both clubs, make them both fire

proof and so on, in exchange for the fact that they would become one,
because of course it is totally absurd to have a men's and a women's
faculty club on one campus." To which I certainly agreed. I said,
"It is absurd." It was forced in very curious ways. I would not
blame the women, but I sure think we ought to figure out how to
merge.

"Well," Peg said, "we've had some trouble already. We actually
merged about two years ago, with the result that the manager of the
Men's Faculty Club came up and took all the dishes away and all of
our furnishings and said he was going to use this for a filing storage
system."

(I said, "Oh, oh, there we go again with those carrels.") Now
this you probably heard from Josephine Smith and other more vivid
tale-tellers than mine.

Riess: Yes, the infamous Chuck Walters.
Miles: Yes, yes, yes.

"So it was all dropped because there was such a passion at that
point, but now we are almost consummating a deal for merger. We have
one more meeting." Peg said, "I do not understand why these men talk
to us the way they do. They are very rude. I do not know how to
cope. You have been on so many committee meetings, we thought it
would be nice for you to be there and know how to talk to them."

116

Miles: I thought this was real funny because I probably had been

defeated on more committee meetings than anybody in town. Anyway,
she said, "We have also asked Bobbie..."

Riess: Bobbie who?

Miles: Bobbie [Babette] Barton, in the Law School, a very lovely woman.

"She is going to be on the board." I said, "Who else?" Then
she mentioned the others and they were all, if you will pardon the
expression, from P.E. The reason I "pardon the expression" is that
these were the women that had given out in the first place. Mary
Lou Norrie is a great gal...

Riess: You mean who hadn't considered it a battle worth fighting?

Miles: Yes, somehow they are, I do not know. Now those poor ladies are
being beaten down by their new colleagues. They've got double in
spades, I am afraid.

Anyway, I said, "They are giving into the, they are not backing
you up there . "

She said, "Now, how do you know that?"
I said, "Well, I have talked to them over many years."
"They are not backing me up . I cannot believe it."
I said, "Okay, Bea and I will come and back you up."*

Well, it is an unpleasant story and I do not want to tell it in
detail. We came to the afternoon meeting and those guys were like
I have never seen people like that before, even when they barred the
door at the club. There was a fellow there by the name of [Phillip]
Johnson. I will only mention his name. He is a lawyer. I have
really forgotten the name of the president of the Men's Faculty Club.

They said that they did not need to explain it to us because we
were new members of the board. Their own new members had come back
on in November, and it was too late to explain it to us . I said,
"It is never too late if we do not understand."

"Oh, yes it is, we do not want to waste our time going over
this all over again."

It was a silly dialogue. So at some point, I think Bea or
somebody said, "In other words, your idea of merger, is really as
far as we are concerned, submerger." Well of course, I mean, how
else can it be? You cannot have two clubs conflicting back and forth,
One has to give into the other. It is obvious.

^Unclear. Bea may be Babette Barton.

117

Miles: I said, "I think we should petition for another meeting before we do
any voting here."

Riess: You were brought in to the meeting at which things were going to be
decided? Peg Uridge could have gotten onto the situation a little
earlier.

Miles: She could have, but you see she did not realize that her board was
going to vote against her until the last minute.

So I said we needed another meeting. Then Johnson said some
thing like, "Oh, you women always fiddling around and not making up
your minds ! "

Bea stood up and said, "Thank-you for the opportunity to meet
with you and we will be glad to meet with you again sometime when
your attitude has changed." She was great I

Fortunately my helper was waiting out there, so we could both
make an exit, which we did. It was great. That was the end of that
merger because they were too mad at us. Peg, of course, was happy.
Then Peg was able to put their finances on their feet .

Riess: So they did not try other means. They just felt at that point that
they were well rid of you.

Miles: Us. Yes, we were "shilly-shallying." They would wait until we all
got tired or something.

Riess: Of course, Josephine Smith might maintain that they were doing it all
for financial reasons anyway.

Miles: To get their debt wiped out. Oh, sure.
Riess: Do you think that is it?

Miles: Well, it was certainly an important factor. Also, you see, the Haas's
offer was very fine. We needed reshingling, we needed new plumbing, we
needed all the safety features. Both clubs got them. Even that would
have been worth it. Then there was the debt. But the third thing
is, why did they want to bother with us?

They would have been more profitable if we had joined them.
Though the stipulations for joining were kind of funny. I mean,
we were not welcome to come in there at any time and eat or anything
like that. It was sort of limited what we could do.

Riess: Had you ever looked at the actual wording of the Haas offer to see
in fact whether that was interpreted by Heyns as requiring merger?

118

Miles: I had understood that Heyns proposed it to Haas, not vice versa.
Riess: Proposed it to Haas and also proposed merger?

Miles: He proposed it for the men. He was anxious to get the women out of
there. This is the way I am told. This is all second hand.

So the first hand stuff and this is what I wanted to tell you
about my unregenerateness was when he had these board meetings, I
just loved them. They were almost as interesting as the research
meetings. We would have things like, "We cannot pay our bills for
next month and we have got to raise the rent on the garages."
(Those garages are gone now.) "Now, let us see, how much shall we
raise them?" Then we spent three hours debating whether it should
be fifteen dollars or twenty dollars.

Bea would say, "Look, we spent three hours on this, couldn't we
come to some decision before ten o'clock?"

Peg would say, "I don't want to rush things."
Then Bea would say, "But I have to go."

I would say, "Well, couldn't we have some principle for how much
to raise the garage rent? Like, for example, how much do we need?"
I would say, "Just for jokers, I will move that we raise the rents
twenty dollars a garage."

Everybody, "Jo! Don't you realize that Susan Smith could never
afford twenty dollars a month?" I would go out of there just
laughing! I guess I am just very fond of general principles. These
ad hominem arguments over everything just defeated me. Peg, busy
as she was, was that way. So, I do think there is something you can
say about women, at least that group of women.

Riess: You have made the point that you believed in discussion, and your
students would say to you, "Let us just cut this talk out."
Dec is ion -making was something you were learning from your students?

Miles: No, not quite, it was a little different from that. Our department
was wonderful at having meetings, decision-making meetings. They
were just really terrific. George Stewart and Jim Caldwell were
two men of principle ACLU principle and all kinds of good principle,
They kept us steadily to principle.

But the students of the sixties wanted to work by osmosis, not
by argument or principle. They would say, "Do not hassle us." They
would just sit there quietly, and decide. They would not talk to

119

Miles: each other. They would just sit there quietly and then one student
would say, "Let's meet Thursday at three." They would say, "Okay."
Then they would all get up and leave, without even asking me if that
was okay. It was osmosis.

Riess : Osmosis is a mysterious process.

Miles: The kids I am hoping they will do that again. They worked together
wonderfully in the sixties with a sense that they understood each
other and they did not need to argue, or their word "hassle."

Riess: But it was because they scorned this kind of waste of time, they
scorned the process?

Miles: Well, they scorned argument. They scorned conflict. They just wanted
to decide by getting the same feeling together. Now that was not
Peg. Peg wanted to talk it all through. She wanted to talk it
through in terms of every single possible instance, of everybody who
might suffer.

She just did not want to draw principles like, "Let us raise
the rents on some basis." So, no, those were very different. Her
meetings were very systematic, but so detailed that you would go
out just tearing your hair.

6) The Club for Now, and the Future

Miles: When Peg died, Katharine Williams became president, and she had also
had a marvelous executive job [with the university], even better
than Peg's, assigning rooms to professors all over campus she was
really embattled. She has been a real miracle worker. Peg was
wonderful to turn the tide from nothing to something, but Williams
has just been phenomenal. She has got it on the basis it is now,
which is that we are actually making money, men are pouring into the
club membership, the lunches are pretty good, and her board meetings,
I hear, are just marvelous. They take half an hour. If there is
any problem, we have two lawyers on the board now. They always clear
these matters up, it is so great.

She was telling me about something the other day about some
really knotty issue. The lawyers looked at her in amazement and
said, "It is not a knotty issue. You look at it this way." She
did, and everybody applauded and that was that.

I am not going to say that there are not good women other than
lawyers there; of course there are. There is a tendency, when some
kind of women get together, I think, in a club meeting atmosphere,

120

Miles: to ignore everything but the fascinating details. It is nice in a
way. It was a great phenomenon to me who had heard it all in a
faculty setting where they were pretty rigorous. So, that about
brings me to the end I guess.

Riess : Peg began the process of turning it around, and Katherine Williams
completed it? This is the strength of women now, or of the presi
dents?

Miles: Well, sadly, I am afraid, it is partly the strength of those two

women picked. They are not faculty members. The club is more and
more administrative women. This makes me so angry and sad. I
thought of this this morning when I was thinking of you. I thought,
in freshman English we often tell a student if you do not know what
the end of something is, go back and read your first sentence. I
thought of what my first sentence would be, and it would have
Pauline Sperry in it.

Pauline Sperry 's feeling then was that women owed something to
each other as separate from what they owed to humanity. I was con
verted to it, and I did not believe it to begin with. I am now
converted to it, and I am now finding that it is against the new
style. Women do not want to do it now.

The women in our department say I have quoted this, probably,
for you "If I thought that I was in this department for any reason
because I am a woman, or that I had been helped to get here by
women, I would quit." They look right at me when they say this.
They know that I am thinking of twelve or thirteen women who dedi
cated ten years to getting them there. That makes one angry. It is
a kind of self pride that will not face participation as a person.

So, it is sad. I mean, in other words, everything I learned
was great for me, and I am terribly glad that women helped me learn
it. But, it is now useless again.

Riess: Are they in the Men's Faculty Club? Are they choosing to join there?

Miles: Some of them join the men's, not too much. Marian Diamond is an

officer. Some of them do for one thing: it is a shorter distance
than up here. But no, not many, and not as many in proportion as we
have.

Riess:

The men here, I do not know if you have read any of their
letters, but they are so nice and so loyal. You know what they are
praising, don't you?

The food.

121

Miles: Isn't that a regression?

Riess: Yes, of course.

Miles: They are not having any intellectual debates with anybody.

Riess: Can you think of anything that is going on around the club here now
that s_ intellectual?

Miles: Not the way it was in the sixties. We had marvelous meetings in the
sixties. I remember one meeting where a black kid got up and threw
his glass at the speaker, a glass of wine at the speaker. Now that
does not sound as if I should boast about it. But, that kid felt
so deeply: the speaker was saying that practice was not as important
as spontaneity, and this kid said that his folks had made him prac
tice the violin for nineteen years and he was not going to listen to
anybody say that, and he threw his glass.

The club in the sixties was a host to that ferment, but did not
necessarily create it. It was just a host.

Right now they are absolutely desperate to find a president
after Katherine leaves, or a board of directors. Nobody wants to
carry these burdens. There is not that much loyalty per se, as there
was essentially in Peg. I think Katherine has enjoyed it for its
own sake. She is a great manager. She loves getting the kitchen
fixed up. I think for her it has been a good retirement job. For Peg,
it was a real challenge from the women's point of view. But there
is nobody else now.

Elizabeth and I, I should mention this, about three years ago,
tried to start this intellectual club again. Not in the evenings,
because nobody comes on campus in the evenings, supposedly, but at
noon. Sue Ervin-Tripp, by the way, had lots of lunches for women
assistant professors to just tell their problems, and how to help
get promoted, and so on. So, yes, in the past five years, Sue and
Elizabeth, and to a little extent I, have done some work. We have
tried to get women together to talk about their problems .

Riess: Not talking about their research any more though, just about their
problems?

Miles: Well, that is what is so funny. About every other meeting, I would
say, "Now look people, I want to make a speech before everybody goes
home. I want to say, it is fascinating to hear about how you can
or cannot get promoted in the Sociology Department, but, isn't
anybody doing any interesting research?" Sometimes they would take
up the challenge. Some of them would come and tell us some.

122

Miles: Elizabeth wrote me a note the other day saying that she had written
around and nobody had volunteered any. Now, it does not mean they
are not doing it, but it means that there is not any women's cohe
sive spirit. There are only two times, you see, that I lived through
it . One was in the forties which was a hangover from the thirties .
Then the other was in the sixties and seventies, or the seventies
was a hangover from the sixties which was very different from the
first one, but also had lots of life and energy.

I will make one other sentence here. Elizabeth, the statisti
cian, and another woman, who was on a committee with me, who was a
graduate student what was her name? A very fine person, you should
have her name .

Anyway, they asked the question, "Why do 16 percent of the men
graduate students drop before they get their degrees, and 42 percent
of the women?" Then they interviewed, and then they did all the
study they could. The main result is that we set up what we called
a "hand-holding committee" for the women. The women are now dropping
at exactly the same rate as the men. So we really did a roughly 20
percent good job.

That proves something about what they need. It does not inspire
me very much. Again, it is not one of the things that urges me to
greater heights .

Riess: It sounds like you are saying that women have to be taught to be
nice to each other.

Miles: [giggle] "You have to be carefully taught?!" I do not know. I am

puzzled by it. I just wrote a poem which said, "When I was a little
girl, my mother was trying to get out the vote. She took me with
her, knocked on all these doors and asked all these women to vote

for the vote in California in 19 , " whatever it was, '16, '15,

whatever. "I said, 'Mother, why are you doing this?' 'Just because
after the women get the vote, there will be no more war'." So, I
just end with that question.

In a way, that is the same thing, isn't it? Women have a cer
tain power of really working idealism. Maybe you are right, maybe
it just has not been exercised enough.

Riess: Marian Diamond had a lunch group. What that a "hand-holding" group
or a research group?

Miles: It was a "Marian Diamond group." She would ask women questions, and
we would answer. Her lunches were fun, and it was fun to see the
people. It did not concern anything of what I would hope sometime
we, women, could have. As you see, I am the last one to be talking
about what women should do. Yet, as I say, I got enough of that in
those two different instances to know that it is possible. I just
don't know why it is so infrequent.

123

Riess: Well, I hope you keep thinking about it, and observing it and so on,
I think it is very interesting. I wonder what the club's future is
going to be? What do you think?

Miles: I think it is going to go up and down, as before. Katherine, I

think, will hold it together, unless she gets terribly impatient.
If she can find somebody to be president that will hold it together
for a few more years how much that continuity could be created, I
don't know.

I will come right now! [to helper]

Riess: Do you think it makes a difference that the board is dominated by
administrative people?

Miles: By administrative we mean Law Department, Library Department, some
administrative assistants.

Riess: Deans of women, and Sproul Hall people.

Miles: Yes. It is not that they are dominated by it, that is what they
mostly are.

I have just been inviting all the new graduate students in
English not all, but the ones I meet to join. It only costs one
dollar a month, if you can imagine, for graduate students. Just
this year for the first time, about six or seven have joined very
enthusiastically and said, "What a bargain!" Now this is a differ
ent reason. Maybe economics will [do it].

Okay, Bill. [to helper]

Transcriber: Beverly Butcher
Final Typist: Nicole Bouche

GUDVEIG GOKDON-BRITLAND

123a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Gudveig Gordon-Britland

1) Background, Education and Employment 124

2) Women's Faculty Club Office Job, 1959 126

3) Arrangements for the Residents I 27

4) The Managers

5) Working with the Men's Club 131

6) The Auditor i32

7) The Public Relations Part of the Job 134

8) The Abbos 137

9) The Breakfast Arrangements

10) Joint Operations

11) The President and the Members, 1972-1976 145

Gudveig Gordon-Britland, Office

Manager, The Women's Faculty Club

Photographed by Suzanne R-iess, 1982

124

Gudveig Gordon-Britland
March 2, 1982
Interviewed at her home

1) Background, Education and Employment

Riess: First of all, tell me a little bit about yourself and your background.

G-B: In early 1914 I was in this country with my father and mother to
visit. We came by rail through the United States.

Riess: This was war time?

G-B: It was just before the war started,
in time.

We got home to Norway just

I had received permission from school and every week I had
to write a resume of what I had seen and why. The "why" was very
important to my teacher because she said, "That's when we know
what you have been doing, and we hear about where you have been
and what you really saw." So, I had to do that on my first visit
to California. It was very interesting for me, too, because I
did learn a lot by doing that page every week. It was mailed to
my teacher every week. She read it in her classes.

I remember the first time that I used an American slang
I had been told that we were to pay five cents, "a nickel," on
the streetcar. So, I wrote that I paid a nickel, everybody paid
a nickel. That page was returned to me by my teacher with a big
red note saying, "I do not accept slang." I had to re-write the
full page and then return it to my teacher she was an excellent
teacher. Do you know, to this day it's five cents! It is not
a nickel.

Then in 1927 we were here on a visit again, but my mother
at that time became desperately ill. After my mother passed away,
my father returned to Norway and I stayed on. I met my husband,
and we established our home.

Riess: Did you go on with schooling here?

12!

G-B: No, I had all my schooling in Norway. I attended school for my

American citizenship, which I got in 1950. That was very interesting.
And it was a beautiful experience. I made up a little book about
my American citizenship. I like it very much to sort of look back
and see what's happened and how scared I was.

Riess: Was your husband an American citizen?

G-B: Yes, he was an officer in the United States Navy.

Riess: Your hyphenated name, is that your name plus his?

G-B: No, no, it's Scot and British, his parents.

Riess: How did your connection with the university and the Women's Faculty
Club begin?

G-B: My husband passed away and, of course, I had to get to work. I
couldn't just sit, you know, and it was war years.

I was not a citizen at that time my husband passed away, so
when I had to go to work I was pretty scared, because the first
question each time that I went in for an interview was, "Are you
an American citizen?" And when I said, "No," I could see the chair
sort of move a bit.

I was accepted at Capwell's for my first part-time job. I
did get a little experience about being with people and listening
to all this real fast manner of talking. And, of course, all the
new words! I had a little pad in my pocket. I wrote up all the
words that I didn't understand. When I came home, in the evening,
I took the dictionary, and tried to, you know, follow the words
that they had told me. So, it was lovely. Really, they were so
nice to me.

Then I heard that there were openings at Breuner's. I went
there and I was accepted. I worked myself up to a nice work. I
was purchasing agent for fourteen years. I worked there for fifteen
years. But Breuner's has a habit of firing employees every two
or three years. They think that someone else should come in.
They've always done that so, I was fired. In between, they fired
quite a few from the store.

126

2) Women's Faculty Club Office Job, 1959

G-B: Then I had to look for something else. And, of course, I asked
everybody if they knew of something, because at that time I had
worked for fifteen years and I had experience, of course, very
good experience. But it was at that time, too, when people at
forty shouldn't work anymore. You remember that? It was a little
hard. So, I had friends asking about everything.

Suddenly one evening I received a telephone call that the
manager of the Women's Faculty Club tells us that they are looking
for someone to help in the office. "Tomorrow they will call you
for an interview." So, I went up and it was Mrs. [Amy] Bumstead
who was the office manager there, we had a nice little visit
she had been in Europe many years and she accepted me. She said
she would give the information to the board of directors, and of
course it would be up to them, but evidently they accepted me too.

Riess: Who introduced you to Mrs. Bumstead?

G-B: It was Mrs. Caroline Radclif fa, who was the club manager then.
First I was the assistant, with Mrs. Bumstead.

Riess: You became full-time in October 1960?

G-B: Yes.

Riess: Who else was the staff then, at that time?

G-B: It was just the two of us. We had someone come in from four 'til
nine because those that lived there, [felt] that they shouldn't
open the door themselves ; someone should come and open the door
for them.

Riess: [laughter] You mean the residents needed to have a door person?
G-B: Yes.

Riess: I can tell by the expression on your face that you have some feeling
about that. [laughter]

G-B: Well you know, after all, when you come home, you open your own

door. But that was it, you see, it was special there. When they
started to have trouble on the campus, it was the campus police
that suggested that we close earlier so that no one would have
to walk through campus. So we closed at six, which was horrible
for those that lived there. But they realized they didn't have
anything to say about that.

127

Riess: This was in the beginning of the sixties?

G-B: Yes.

Riess: That meant a six o'clock curfew?

G-B: All that lived there had their own keys of course. And we did
not serve dinner. So they had to go out.

I should mention that also on our staff was Mrs. Virginia
Vail. She worked with us in the office on week-ends and when we
needed extra office assistance. She, too, had worked on campus
so she knew many of our members. It was so nice Virginia was
loved by everyone, always helpful, dependable, capable, and we
knew the office had excellent attention when she was there.

3) Arrangements for the Residents

Riess: I looked at the job description for the office assistant. I don't
know whether you've ever seen your job description?

G-B: No, what did I do?

Riess: Well, I thought I would tell you what you did and then you could
make some comments on doing it. [laughter] Everyday you had to
check the meal chits and do something about security.

G-B: Yes, if any windows had to be opened, I had to do that, because
it should say there that I was definitely a clerk. Everybody in
the building referred to me as "the clerk" and the clerk should
do everything. So, I was definitely the clerk until Miss Murdock
came to the office as manager. Mrs. Bumstead resigned and Miss
Murdock replaced her. She changed my title to assistant; so nice
of her to do that, for me.

When I came, in the morning, I had to open all the doors that
they thought should be open. Then I opened the office and I went
to the vault and I opened it and took all the books out and then
locked it again. But in the evening, before I left at four, I
had to close all the windows and lock all the doors and see that
the kitchen was under control. It was funny, you know, I had to
do all this.

Then I had to take the newspaper, the Berkeley Gazette that
was a day paper at that time up to Mrs. [Mary B.] Davidson. I
had to knock on her door and then just leave it. I couldn't open

128

G-B: the door. And I had to wait for that paper, I could not leave.

If it was four-thirty or five o'clock and the paper wasn't there.
I had to wait.

Riess: That was a very special arrangement, in that case?

G-B: Yes.

Riess: She asked you to do that?

G-B: She didn't ask me, she told me. There's a difference. I was told
because I was a clerk. That was all right with me, I was at work,
so that didn't bother me any.

Someone that didn't care for all this ordering people around,
she said , "If you miss a window or a door you will hear about it
the next morning. So, be real careful because Miss Dornin takes
care of all the windows, all the doors, all the lights, and, when
someone is reading in the library at nine o'clock, she says, 'It's
time to lock up,' and she turns off the lights." It was sort of
double check.

So, I was very careful but after all we're all humans. Once
in a while, if a window you know, somebody could have opened that
window. All the rooms do not have cross circulation; they have
one window. Then in the summertime they would go and open the
window in the hallway. Of course, I closed it at four. Well,
at six, seven, or eight o'clock, she found a window open. I hadn't
closed it. That was my fault, it was open.

Riess: It's all so petty, isn't it?

G-B: But that was the atmosphere of the club, because the people that
lived there, it was their home. On a hot summer day, and we do
have hot summer days, that basement [office] was sort of hot. All
we had was the windows . We were not allowed to keep the front
door open "because it was a home; it was not a building."

Riess: This feeling, on the part of the residents, that it was their home,
therefore everybody who worked there were their servants, did this
come up in board meetings? Did they try to work this out?

G-B: No, I don't think so. I think the board members very much agreed
with it. Quite a few of them had lived there that were on the
board.

Riess: Who was Mrs. Davidson?

129

G-B: Dean Davidson. She also had a table in the dining room with her

reservation on it. It was just a table for two and only one chair
because she did not want company.

Riess: It sounds like there were a few primadonnas.

G-B: Yes, that's why we had the Family Table. When we received visitors
from other countries at that time, they came by ship, and they
had trunks some of those who lived there would come to the office
and they'd say, "How many trunks did she bring?" [laughter] If
we said, "One," they couldn't sit at the Family Table. If they
brought two, they were accepted.

Riess: What does that mean?

G-B: I suppose it meant that they would have a little more money if
they brought two, and maybe a little more wardrobe.

Riess: Who ran the Family Table?

G-B: Miss Czarnowski and Miss Dornin. No one sat at the Family Table
except the residents and the people they chose. But you see, it
was their home.

It was desperately hard to be a manager to them. Mrs. Radcliffe
needed things for the club, tablecloths or something like that,
or maybe something for flowers "We can't afford it." There was
a "no" most of the time from the board. Mrs. [Lucille] Phipps
had the same thing.

Mrs. Phipps managed, somehow, to open the library for special
luncheons, like for a little birthday lunch, when you don't want
to be in the main dining room. There was someone that asked and
she said, "Oh, surely you can be in the library." There was quite
a discussion afterwards. She was really reprimanded for doing
that.

But sometimes things happen that should happen, and one day
it did: one of the members of the board of directors had friends
coming and they were very important friends. She probably wanted
to have it real nice. So she asked Mrs. Phipps if she could have
it in the library. Mrs. Phipps said, "I have been reprimanded
for this so I don't know. You'll have to find out rrom the board
of directors." Being that she was one of them, [chuckle] she said,
"I'll take that responsibility."

Mrs. Phipps had to bring tablecloths from her home all the
time in order to make it a nice luncheon. She brought other things
to make it nice, because all we had were crude, really. (All the

130

G-B: good silver was kept in the vault and could not be used except

like for the Women's Faculty Club tea; it wasn't like now at all.)

It was a beautiful table when she finished; we saw it, she was
so proud.

She had closed the door when everything was ready. And of
course, you know, there was somebody coming down the steps, opening
the door. But no one was supposed to go into the lounge or library.
They were supposed to stay there and look in from the foyer like.
They saw this, and of course, "Who ordered this?" Then they were
told that it was one of the board of directors.

Well, that sort of established it. I think it was sort of
ironed out in the board of directors meeting that it should be
opened for all the members.*

4) The Managers

Riess: Mrs. Phipps had quite a long term, as manager, didn't she?

G-B: Yes, she was very well accepted. She was a very good manager.

As a manager when you ask for things to make things go better and
nicer and the answer is "no", it is always the manager that will
be blamed for that, for not being interested, because the board
of directors will not tell you that they said, "We can't afford
it." Which they could afford. They had the money. But it was
just anything new. It was just, they felt because they had it,
why buy new things?

Riess: The board of directors changed every year, but you're saying their
philosophy never changed?

G-B: There were always some staggered, since their terms were staggered.
That's all that was needed.

Riess: When Mrs. Phipps left around 1966, did she retire?

G-B: Yes, Mrs. Phipps retired at that time. But then they asked her
to come to Strawberry Lodge. She went down there. She was just
going to help out, but they liked her so well, they added more and
more and made her the manager rather than help.

*See further stories appended.

131

Riess: So she went on there and then she was replaced by Mrs. [Patricia]

Barnes. Did these managers hire the cook? What is their relation
ship to what comes out of the kitchen?

G-B: Really I don't know just how that is done. I think Mrs. Radcliffe
had hired Katy Martin. She was with us till we closed the dining
room for the merger. She belonged to the union. She was an
excellent cook.

Riess: I wondered what connection the managers had to the quality of the
kitchen.

G-B: That you have to ask Miss Murdock, because I don't know. I don't
know, because the board of directors meetings, I didn't attend.
And there was very little that was told to us. Miss Murdock. She
was a member, she had lived at the club for a while. She was a
member of the board of directors. She was a president, too. That
gave a different feeling and a different atmosphere in the office
all together. It was joyful.

5) Working with the Men's Club

Riess: [laughter] Now, to keep on some kind of a track here, I was going
through the job description of the office assistant. So, checking
the meal chits. Then weekly, you had to do something about
reciprocity with The Faculty Club.

G-B: Yes, for members of our club that went to the men's club. And
some of the men came to our club, like on Thursdays, because we
had roast beef and popovers on Thursday. That was just a man's
dish. So on Thursdays we had visitors from the men's club, believe
it or not. All those chits had to be added up and typed and sent
over to the men's club. So that I had to do every week, too. Then,
at the end of the month, I would add up the totals of the four
weeks and then send a bill over to them.

The office manager over there, he would just take the tape,
come over, and say, "Well, this is it, here's your check." That
was all there was to it. Mr. Smith was his name. We had a beautiful
association with him. He was marvelous to work with. He used
to come and sit down on the chair and he'd have a cup of coffee
and when he laughed his tummy would go up and down, like a Santa
Glaus! But we had to be sure that it was correct because we didn't
want anything to happen. So that's what I had to do.

132

Riess: Was there much use of the men's club by the women?

G-B: Some of them were always there. [chuckles] So, then they sent
the bills over to us. On our bills it says Women's Faculty Club
and Men's Faculty Club, so it would go in the different slots on
their bill.

Riess: What happened when the men came over? Did they have to make a
reservation ahead of time or could they just walk right in on
Thursdays?

G-B: Sometimes they would, they would probably have extra fellows with
them to introduce them to roast beef and popovers and apple pie.
They would. And then some of the members would too, so they were
sure that the table was ready. So I had to do that, too.

Riess: Was that an issue for the residents, that there were all these
men there on Thursdays?

G-B: No, I think they got used to it when Katy came. Mrs. Radcliffe
knew really how to handle them with a silk glove and at the same
time make them feel that, yes, it was their decision. She knew
how to do that.

6) The Auditor

Riess: Monthly you had to prepare for the visit from the auditor. I think
that plan started in 1957 or when Mrs. Bumstead left. She suggested
that the Women's Faculty Club get a professional firm for the monthly
closing of the books. Is this a usual practice to do it that way?

G-B: I think it should be because it does give the board of directors

the right to ask questions and it also gives them the feeling that
the office is in good hands. Mrs. Bumstead was a certified public
accountant. That's why they didn't have it before.

Riess: When she was there they didn't have it?

G-B: She had worked on campus. They knew her because she was with the
student union, the ASUC. She was the manager of that for many,
many years. But after she left, I do think it was excellent because
I felt much that when he came that everything was in order. I
could ask him questions. It was a wonderful feeling when he came.
I was just looking forward to it. When Miss Murdock became manager,
she had the same feeling that he_ was the one that gave the report.

133

G-B: We didn't. We had to deal with it, because we had to prepare it
and have it ready for him, but the results that he sent over to
the board of directors, that was his. We enjoyed it very much.

We enjoyed one [accountant] we had very much. The day he
left, I got into trouble with Miss Czarnwoski. Miss Murdock and
I, we were shocked when he came and said, "Today's the last day,"
and we said, "Oh, no!" But he was going to open his own office
in Walnut Creek, so naturally he didn't want to come to us anymore.
We were just heartbroken. Miss Murdock said, "We ought to have
a good cup of coffee today, could you go up and fix something?"
[chuckles]

I had to make it festive, so I went out to the vault and I
got a silver tray and all the nicest things I could find. I said,
"There should be a flower there too." Miss Czarnowski made the
arrangements, flower arrangements. She didn't "take care of the
flowers," she "made the arrangements," a higher level. Nobody
dared to do anything about it.

I went into the dining room. I thought, gee, there ought
to be a flower I could pick. And I looked and looked and suddenly
as I walked about, I saw there was one. She had a rose, sort of
tucked in. She didn't want to give it to us in the basement, because
we got all the leftover roses. We could never have new ones because
that was for upstairs. But there was this one, just sort of put
there. It wasn't arranged inside or anything because I sort of
[plucked it] and all of a sudden I had it. I put it on one side
of the tray.

Katy liked him too, and when we came up to get some coffee
for him she said, "He's leaving? You just wait a minute, I'll
have popovers." I was just delighted! I said, "I'll take the
tray down, and then you bring the popovers." I came with the tray
and I put it on the desk, and Miss Murdock was so pleased. She
said, "Cookies?" And acted like this [whispers, gesture]. Here
came Katy, knocking on the door, she said, "How would you like
to have some hot popovers and some butter?" We just, "whoo!" So
that was a delightful sort of ending.

But after that [auditors] just came and went. We didn't get
[attached to them].

Riess: Miss Czarnowski never missed that flower?

G-B: Yes, she did! And she came down to the office and gave me a bawling
out to the extent that Miss Murdock had to stop her. Later Miss
Murdock told her to write me a note and tell that she was sorry
she had spoken to me like that.

134

Riess: Did she?

G-B: She did. I will give her credit for that. But she was outraged
that I would touch her arrangements. I didn't know a thing about
flowers, you know. Nobody knew anything. But the day I retired
from the club she wrote me a real nice letter. I so much appreciated
her good wishes, and being friends, again.

Riess: I've seen pictures of her arrangements. They're always very
artistic.

G-B: Yes, they were beautiful. She had the flower garden and we were
never allowed to go out and take a rose.

Riess: Was that in the front, or in the back?

G-B: In the front. The rose bushes are still there. But of course
it probably isn't given tender loving care like before.

7) The Public Relations Part of the Job

Riess: [continuing job description] As needed, you kept the member ledger
cards up-to-date.

G-B: Yes, because I did the billing on the ledger cards. I did all

billing. Statements were mailed once a month to all the members.

Riess: And you cut stencils for menus. You checked office supplies. You
did PR work, public relations. That must cover a multitude of
good and bad things, because they describe public relations as
contact with the residents, taking messages, mail.

G-B: Sure, because the telephone we had then was so we could contact
every room. If there was a caller, we couldn't take her right
up; even though we knew that they were expected, we couldn't do
that. We had to telephone and say, "Miss So-and-so is here, if
it's convenient for you to see her." If it was, then we said,
"Yes, you may go up, and her room number is such-and-such."

Riess: They would receive people in their rooms or would they come down
to the lounge?

G-B: Sometimes they would come down. If it was a man, of course, they

would come down, except Mrs. Davidson, her son always went upstairs.
But he too, had to be telephoned to go on up. Can you imagine?

135

Riess: In that great big, wonderful university, essentially a democratic
place, the Women's Faculty Club had some backward views.

G-B: But, of course, when they grew up, they grew up in this, that there
were them and then there were those down there. You must favor
those above you. I think that's how they grew up.

Riess: They were all single women, weren't they, except Mrs. Davidson?

G-B: Yes. Mrs. Bumstead wasn't, and she lived there. But about all
the others were single. But that shouldn't have anything to do
with it, because they were with people everyday. It shouldn't
be that that should be something special that you had to keep away
from, because they were working with them, they were colleagues.
So why be so [rigid and unpleasant], you know? They did have to
show mutual respect. And it shouldn't be just for an evening or
some special occasion.

Riess: Over the years your name would come up in the minutes.

G-B: [chuckle] What I didn't do?

Riess: Nothing bad. Let's see. "Mrs. G. GB. had been working on Saturdays."

G-B: That was my nickname, because my name was too long, so G. GB. I
even signed G . GB .

Riess: You had been working on Saturdays and you were paid extra for that.

G-B: You know, when you are working and you like where you are, you
have to give.

Riess: Occasionally some good soul would bring attention to the fact that
you had been putting in more hours.

G-B: I was expected to do other duties, too.

Riess: You were expected to be there until the Gazette came.

G-B: Yes, I wasn't paid overtime for that, because I was expected to
do that. I mean that was one of the things that went with the
office, and that's all there was to it.

Riess: Somebody should have taken some responsibility for a more equitable
arrangement.

136

G-B: Miss Murdock was a friend of all of them, and to me, too. It put
her in a very hard position. They would say, "Margaret, I want
that done." So, what does Margaret do? Still, it put her in a
very hard position, because she had lived there. She didn't just
open the door and come in, which would have made it a little
different atmosphere I think.

She constantly had to do it. I admire her for it because
she constantly had to. She did have beautiful, beautiful manners
to keep them satisfied. Beautiful. She is so_ precious. I do
admire her for how she really managed all of them.

We had a little joke between us. Most of it, we just had
to chuckle, because we just couldn't be under that strain. We
had to do something to explode. About ten thirty, in the morning,
from the third floor we would hear creak, creak, creak, all
the way down. We did not have carpets on the stairs. Then we
would look up and say, "Wonder what their complaints are today."
We would be writing and writing and looking this way instead of
this way. Miss Murdock sometimes would pick up the telephone and
sound busy. [But she would look up to find out what this person
wanted.] It would be a complaint that, oh, there probably was
coffee in the saucer or somebody had left a window open and didn't
close it, had promised to close it. Or somebody had taken books
from the library and didn't sign for them. All these little minute
problems.

And we'd say, "What did you expect me to do? I wasn't even
here. So, why didn't you tell her this morning at the breakfast
table?" But oh, no, it was up to the office, of course, to the
manager, because that couldn't be done by the residents.

At Christmastime, I always invited those residents that
couldn't get home not anyone that lived there, of course, but
those that couldn't get home, I invited them to have Christmas
with me. I celebrate a Norwegian Christmas. I would write up what
the program was because I wanted them to know. If they were with
different religions, I respected that, but I also wanted them to
enjoy it with me. I would write this and send it to them.

Everybody accepted, and oh, they loved it! There were some
that I didn't think would even walk about the Christmas tree with
me. But they did and enjoyed it. I had each one sing a Christmas
or, I didn't call it Christmas, a favorite song. And they enjoyed
that too.

137

G-B: It was just a different sort of work. Because it wasn't really
just office work. They came to the office and they had a little
visit with us. I do think that quite a few of them were lonely.
Once in a while there would be a "How do you do." But that terrific,
stiff, cold acceptance from the Family Table. You can't live with
that. You have to have some warmth. So they used to come to the
office and Miss Murdock and I, we would chuckle with them. She
did a beautiful job keeping them all in order.

Riess: What was Miss Murdock 's formula for dealing with it, do you think?

G-B: She had been reared in a different atmosphere. Her father was

an author and he was part of San Francisco. There was a different
atmosphere because there were different races about her. She got
used to that. They were all there. She heard of all this. So,
she had that in her background .

8) The Abbos

Riess: The next manager then was Gaston Abbo. And it was interesting
to read, in the minutes, his application for this job. He had
been managing hotels in India and Indonesia and Malaysia.

G-B: Can't you imagine him coming to the Women's Faculty Club? Can't
you imagine the explosion?

Riess: Well, I think it depends on him, what kind of an explosion. He
sounds like he was a very sophisticated character.

G-B: Yes but he was too sophisticated for the Women's Faculty Club.

Typical French, and he dazzled everybody. He sold himself beauti
fully. That was very easy, very easy. And he was on his own,
definitely on his own. And they accepted him until things started
to go. Then it was just too expensive, it really was.

Riess: Did he bring his own cook?

G-B: No, we had our own. Katy. Katy Martin. Katy knew she was a good
cook. She could have something special, too. She agreed with
that. She said, "If he tells me I'll do it. I have to." But
she enjoyed it thoroughly.

Riess: So, he did more continental and exotic things?

138

G-B: Oh, yes, and she would say, "Well now, I don't know how to do that."
She said, "You tell me how I can make it." But it wasn't always
he could, [laughter] Katy said, "You have to give me the recipe
for that in English." And he couldn't do that. So then we just
sort of went back to creamed tuna and what have you.

Katy wanted very much to do different things, but if you read
the menu from week to week, you knew that the first week of the
month and the last week of the month would be about the same, except
maybe it was just turned around a little bit, you know, the salad
came before the main entree or something of that sort.

But there were lots of times that Katy sort of pushed in little
things, just to try. And, of course, it would be accepted. She
enjoyed that.

Then when Mr. Abbo came he said, "You call it what?" She
would give him the name. That wasn't fancy enough. So, the two
of them would try to figure the American name and the French name
and then get a name in between. But no, that didn't work. They
just had a ball out there in the kitchen, the two of them.

Once in a while Katy would say, "You tell me all these things
to do them, but you can't tell me how, so let me do it my way."
Then he would walk out. No, he couldn't do that. "She couldn't
talk to him like that!"

Riess: [laughter] Who settled their squabbles?

G-B: Mrs. Abbo. She was gentle. She had, more or less, been kept in
the background, I think, because he was always there. She, of
course, didn't take part in any of the restaurants that he was
managing. Because they had their own servants where they had been.
So, naturally, she had had a different life altogether. For her
to sit in that little room at the Women's Faculty Club wasn't very
nice. She had a very lonely time there.

Riess: They lived in the club?

G-B: Yes. They were the first managers that lived there. And of course,
husband and wife, it was very disturbing to the others that lived
there, you see, because after all, there was a man in there. But
anyway, they lived through it.

But he served wine before dinner. At first he started in
the library. There weren't very many that realized that it was
served in there. So, then he put it out in the foyer there. And
that [was very popular] until they realized they had to pay for
it. [laughter]

139

G-B: He didn't want them to pay for it. It should be just gracious.

He said, "When you have guests for dinner, don't you serve wine?"
He said, "It's natural." But it wasn't, of course.

Riess: How long did that last?

G-B: Oh, it lasted for a few months. Then they had to pay for it. The
board of directors said they had to pay for it, because the wine
got to be a bit too expensive.

Riess: So, would it just go on their meal chits?

G-B: No, they had to pay out of their pocket. And you see, we didn't
have a permit. If they paid, we had to have a permit. We didn't

have a license to sell liquor. So, I think we kept it up for one
week and we suddenly realized that we couldn't do it.

Riess: Did you suddenly realize or did somebody else?

G-B: No, I didn't suddenly realize it, but I think Miss Murdock did.
When she was talking to others, they said, "How did you get a
license?" So, the wine bottle went back on the shelf and all the
wine glasses.

He bought champagne glasses. He bought wine glasses, one
for red wine and one for liqueur. He bought them by the dozens.

Riess: But wouldn't he go to the board to request permission for all of
this?

G-B: Well, he just said he needed it, and "I've already ordered it."

So, what could they do? "I've already ordered and we expect them."
Most of the time they were already there. But what would we need
with champagne glasses? A case of champagne glasses, and one for
the other wines, sherry glasses. They all had to be the best,
which he was used to, but it didn't suit us at all.

Another thing, he didn't realize union to him was something
that he didn't understand at all. When he said, "go and do it"
in those foreign countries, they did without objections, because
they knew if they didn't they would be fired because there were
a dozen there waiting to get his job. With union, you don't do
that.

Riess: Who was union? Katy was union?

140

G-B: Katy was union. The salad-maker was union. The dishwasher was

union. He would say, "You stay till dinner is over." They said,

"No, we don't." He couldn't understand it. So he had an awful

time with union. He didn't know one bit about unions.

And he didn't know about a license for wine. "A license for
wine? You should have a license for coffee but not for wine!"

Riess: Sc, he was a bit of an innocent, you would say?

G-B: But you don't expect men to be innocent either. He had been out
in the world.

Riess: Something happened. He was in the hospital?

G-B: Yes, that was the excuse that they had to get somone else. He

was actually ill. But that gave us the excuse. It was said very
casually that we had to have someone else. Being union, that helped
us.

Riess: Josephine Smith, in an executive session meeting, recommended that
the Abbos be discontinued due to the financial irresponsibilities.
That was in December 1969. Do you think that that was what really
brought it to a head?

G-B: Of course, she took care of the finances. But we just couldn't
keep it up. Because he just ordered frantically.

Riess: Did the men flock over to the Women's Faculty Club during the Abbos 1
tenure? Was it special for the men?

G-B: No.
Riess

Katy was still doing the popovers and roast beef anyway?

G-B: Yes. And she did serve an excellent roast beef. I can just see
the men enjoying it thoroughly. But then, after a year or so,
then they had a new cook over at The Faculty Club. And he got
wind of this roast beef. So he started, but they still came to
us.

9) The Breakfast Arrangements

Riess: When you arrived in the office in the morning, the residents had
already had their toast and coffee or whatever?

141

G-B: Oh, no. Emma came in at six thirty o'clock to prepare breakfast
for them. They were served in the private dining room. And Emma
took care of the dining room and she helped in the kitchen. She
would see that the tables in the dining room were prepared for
lunch. So, she took care of that, and very well, too.

She would come in, but once in a while, the bread that they
wanted wasn't there. So they had to come creak, creak, creak down
the steps and report that. Maybe the coffee was stronger and so
they had to come creak, creak down and tell that to us in the office.

She prepared breakfast. She had to boil the eggs for them,
because they couldn't go out in the kitchen, and they didn't have
anything in the dining room except the toaster. Then sometimes
they'd just sit and wait for her to get the toast and serve the
eggs to them.

But she was really good. "Oh well," she said, "they like
to have something special." Once in a while, she would say, "For
Goodness sakes, just because I didn't have raisin bread!" She
would come down to the office and I would order for her. She would-
say, "Please, don't forget the raisin bread!"

Mrs. Davidson had breakfast in her room. We had the little
kitchenette, but she prepared her breakfast in her room. She did
have lunch in the dining room, and [we had to] be sure that her
table was shiny and her reservation was there that it was the dean's,
and if that ever was soiled, she would give it to Emma and say,
"It's soiled, Emma, why don't you see it? Please type it over again
please." So, we'd type it over again and put it back nice and
shiny.

Riess: Josephine Smith became the volunteer auditor in February 1970,
I believe. Were you still working there when she was that?

G-B: It was a different atmosphere altogether when she came. When there
was something, why she'd just sit down and we'd talk it over, get
it all clear and that was all there was to it. She said, "Every
body makes mistakes. And if they don't they don't work very hard."

Riess: Following Mr. Abbo, was Mr. Gedrose.

G-B: Yes.

Riess: And then Mrs. Florence Curtis?

G-B: Yes.

142

Riess: How long did she stay? I can't find it in the records.

G-B: Florence Curtis, she stayed till the day the merger had failed.
She certainly wouldn't stay a day after that.

10) Joint Operations

G-B: I had a story about the merger.
Riess: You've written that up?

G-B: Yes, but I have no names in any that I have written, because if
you use one name, you have to use them all.*

Riess: Josephine Smith talked about Mr. Walters coming to take the rugs
from the Women's Faculty Club.

G-B: Yes, and he took everything from the kitchen too. And he wanted
to come back and take everything from the other rooms. That's
when we started to hide things. But I never had the key, and it
made him furious!

Riess: Was this a matter of weeks or days or what?

G-B: Oh, it was a matter of months. It just went on and on. He entered
when we first closed our building. "I should stay out."

And we would go over to The Faculty Club, Mrs. Curtis and
myself, because we had lunch over there. We were still on the
payroll of the Women's Faculty Club, so we were allowed to have
lunch [traditionally part of reimbursement for work].

So, Walters wanted an interview with me, because I was to
work for him. The Women's Faculty Club was now a property of his
office. And he would take it over. So I should be interviewed.
He told me then, he said, "I want you to work over there, I want
you to come here once a day and tell me what they talk about, what
they plan. Now," he said, "you will be reimbursed for that."

I said, "I don't work for you, I work for the Women's Faculty
Club." That's when the feathers started to fly. I had to work
for the Women's Faculty Club and they paid me. It was the beginning
of his takeover; he referred to the building as his building.

*See Appendices.

143

G-B:

Riess ;
G-B:

Riess:

G-B:

Riess:
G-B:

Riess:

When we closed the dining room, that was the beginning of the merger.
That is the day. The day after, I was interviewed, and that's
when he told me that that's what I should do. I said no.

He was going to pay you extra for that?

Yes, because he wanted to take it over. He wanted to be the person.
From that day on, I was just mud. Whenever Mrs. Curtis and I came
over to have lunch, he said, "Here come the free loaders." We
didn't pay for it, the club paid for it. But to him, we_ didn't.

So, he had given us a table way, way back. Just good enough.
It was way back. And one day, one of the members from The Faculty
Club came over. He said, "What are you doing back there?" We
said, "We're having lunch." Mrs. Curtis was Irish, so she said,
"We're called the free loaders. So that's where we eat." He said,
"Who called you that?" She didn't want to mention his name, just
went like this. [gesture] He said, "Oh, no, no, no." So, after
that we had a very nice table. We could almost sit where we wanted
to.

It irritated Walters to the fact that he always had to come
real close and sort of give our table a little push.

Oh, incredible!
at lunch?

The dining room was closed at dinner. But also

When the building closed, there was no more lunch. They all went
to The Faculty Club. And they were billed over there. They came
and took our ledgers, because the billing was to be done over there,
we were not going to bill them anymore. And I fought for that
for two weeks before they got them. Then he and the bookkeeper
came over. The two of them, they just took the ledger cards. There
was nothing left for me to do. I was the office manager then,
and he wanted the key to the vault and he never got it.

The residents were still having their breakfast.

That was all. They had all their other meals outside,
was just a dead building, completely dead.

So, it

But then when they came that day, and took everything from
the kitchen, then I alerted them. And it was Mary Lou Norrie who
was president, at that time. But she was for the merger, very
much so, which made it very uneasy for us. It wasn't very pleasant.

I can't understand why it ended up being your battle. I mean,

it just seems outrageous that there weren't other people who weren't

there helping you.

144

G-B: They couldn't help me because I was in the office and he came to
the office.

Riess: I know, but the president herself, I mean, Mary Lou.

G-B: She was for it. So, that didn't help me any. Walters wanted to
build a dining room between the two buildings, all glassed in.
And our lounge would be where they would wait to be served . They
could have wine over in The Faculty Club because they had the bar
there. And then our lounge would be so that others would meet
in our lounge and then go into this, enormous, big, beautiful glassed-
in dining room. That was his dream.

Riess: It sounds kind of nice doesn't it, in a way? I mean, you can see
what a wonderful dream it was?

G-B: Yes, but how would people get there? That's why he wanted the rest
of our building to be torn down. Because he was going to use that
for parking. So, that's when we started to say, "What will be
done after you tear down our building?" That's when the cruel
answer came. "We need parking." And that's when we started to
revolt.

Riess: Mary Lou Norrie wrote in July 1972, "The plans for the first six
months of joint operation did not work out as well as originally
intended. "

G-B: It was a very hard sentence for her to say, I am sure.

Riess: "The major faults seem to be the lack of supervision of work being
done at our building and certain failures in communication between
management, employees, and residents."

G-B: That's putting it mildly. [laughter]

Riess: Gudveig, it's hard to read these things and understand what it's
really saying.

G-B: I think I have been a little sharper in what I have written myself
because I had to deal with Walters every time he came. It was
not very pleasant. He was sure that there was something in that
vault that would make him star, the star of everything, and if
he brought that it would be the beginning of the merger. Can't
you see how beautiful their club would be? And of course, I was
the one that always had to say, "I don't have the key."

Riess: And when Mrs. Uridge was president?

145

G-B: He never asked her for the key. Probably I would say, "Oh, have
it," I would break down, but she wouldn't. She would probably
tell him, "No, listen you are over there and I am here." So,
nothing of that sort. He wasn't going to have a woman tell him
anything.

Riess: At some point in this merger period, Mrs. Uridge took over as the
president? [president, 1973-death in 1978]

G-B: She attended meetings over there and took notes, but she never
said, "Yes, I am in favor of it," or "No, I am not in favor of
it." She just went right in the middle all the way down. She
just took notes and things.

But in the meantime, they raided our kitchen and then they
wanted to come back and take some more. I'm sure that those poor
fellows that came to raid the kitchen and took everything, when
Walters realized that I had found out that they were going to come
and get some more, I'm sure they were fired. They were probably
kicked from here to there for saying such a thing. Because that
was a secret.

11) The President and the Members, 1972-1976

Riess: While Mrs. Uridge was diplomatically working her way through this,
what was the feeling on the part of the club members?

G-B: Well, there were some members that were in favor of it. They worked
very, very hard because they were in favor of it. When the president
Miss Norrie was in favor of it, we needed help. We really needed
help. You wouldn't expect a president to do that, because, as
a president, she knew the history of the club, or at least, she
should, and realized all the work and plans and dreams of those
that had catered to them and worked with that. She should be an
interested president. And not just say, "Well, that's all over now.
We have to progress." But that isn't the idea.

The members, they'd been members for many, many years and
the club was part of them. The merger, it didn't register at first.
They thought, "a merger, well we could try it." Then suddenly,
when they realized that the building would go, that's when they
really started and that was the last minute.

Everything progressed very slowly and suddenly, take it over
and throw it away! Let's start something new! But I am very happy
that somebody spoke up.

146

Riess: That was Mrs. Uridge?
G-B: Yes.

Riess: There had been proposals to turn the building into carrels for
the history department, and other proposals.

G-B: Oh yes, and we had the place they started on campus where the working
mother could leave the children.

Riess: The Women's Center?

G-B: Yes, we had that, because w should have that. And then we had
all these children! You can imagine what the second and third
floors' feelings were when they came in with the kiddies here. Then
they put them down on the sofa and they changed the diapers on
the sofa in the lounge.

Riess: What were your feelings about it?

G-B: Well, I didn't like it. No. I said, this is not a place for it.

Riess: Was it supposed to be permanent, this arrangement?

G-B: It was supposed to be permanent. But then it didn't seem to work
out; there wasn't space enough and too many stairs, because they
didn't have any place where they could wash the children or. any
place where they could feed them except in the dining room, and
the chairs didn't fit, luckily. The tables were too tall, luckily.
So, it didn't work out.

But they had offices on the second floor. They'd taken one,
two, three of our rooms. And then everybody who lived on the second
floor had to lock their rooms, because all of the little ones opened
the door and they went in and had a good time looking at all these
new things. And they didn't like to lock them. They were not
used to having to Irck their rooms.

Riess: Having the women's center there, did that protect the club from
being taken over by something else?

G-B: Yes, I think it did. Because I think the board of directors realized
that it was built as a home, not as a building.

Riess: "As of July 1, 1972, the representatives of the Women's Faculty
Club, on the Joint Operating Committee, will assume complete
responsibility for the operation and the staffing of the women's
club building. . .The accounting and other record keeping required

147

Riess: by the Women's Faculty Club, as part of the Joint Operation, in
connection with the operation of our clubhouse, will continue to
be provided by the Joint Operation."

G-B: That was done over there. I don't know if any of our members had
anything to do with it, because the billing was done there. They
paid dues. I had to bring that over to The Faculty Club. And
I wanted a receipt for the money, naturally. Some of it was in
cheques but I didn't have the ledgers. So, I had them there and
I had to bring it over to their club. Well, he didn't want me
to have a receipt. Then I wouldn't give him the money. I said,
"No receipt, no money." And walked out.

Well, it angered him that I should tell him that I didn't
want to do what he wanted me to do. And the bookkeeper over there,
he was between the devil and the deep sea like I was. I had a
book and I recorded everything in that book. I did not have the
ledger cards that I could record that they had paid their dues.
So I had this little book. I hope they still have it. Because
everything that I brought over there is recorded in that book.

Riess: Do you think that if you had given in to him, given him the keys,
given him the books, given him the silver, what do you think the
net outcome would have been?

G-B: Well, they would still be there.

Riess: So, even when the women's club took over its own operation, it

would have been not feasible to go and retrieve all of that stuff?

G-B: I doubt it. I doubt it very much. Because there were so many

there that were in favor of this that "the women don't need their
own club, let's make it all one; in this era of the world we should
be all one club."

Riess: But you think they would have hung on to the rugs and the silver?
G-B: Oh, definitely. They hung on to everything else.
Riess: In 1976 there was another vote on the merger.

G-B: Yes, that was the final I trust. I left in '76. It was about
time. I had stayed one more year later, because they wanted to
get somebody else. It took them a year, and it shouldn't have
taken them a year, but due to the merger

Riess: After Peg Uridge took over, things calmed down?

148

G-B : She took over when the merger started after Mary Lou left. She
took over. She was not in favor of it, but she wasn't going to
say so. She was smart enough and knowledgeable enough not to say,
"yes." She wanted to find out firsthand, which, of course, saved
the club.

She was excellent, because she talked with everybody, laughed
with everybody. "Oh, yes, yes." But down deep, she didn't commit
herself at all until that final vote.

Riess: In the meantime, the club was finding more money and friends?

G-B: Oh, yes, then we started to have people come in and stay, and get
some money into the club. That's when all these people started
coming in from the different worlds. It was just wonderful. By
that time, all the others had left the club.

Transcriber: Kristen Vigen
Final Typist: Catherine Winter

ELIZABETH SCOTT

14 8a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Elizabeth Scott

1) Family and Education 149

2) Mathematics and Astronomy Departments, Berkeley 151

3) Luncheon Groups at the Women's Faculty Club 153

4) The Women's Faculty Club in the 1960s 157

5) The Question of Merger 160

6) The Women's Center 163

7) Club Organization I 66

Elizabeth Scott, Professor of Statistics, 1959

Photo by G. Paul Bishop

149

Elizabeth Scott

February 18, 1982

Interviewed in her office in Evans Hail, UCB

1) Family and Education

Scott: I was born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, during World War I. My father

retired when I was four years old and studied law. My family moved
to Berkeley so that we could all go to the university. He could
move not exactly anywhere he wanted, but he had some flexibility.
He also wanted to be close to an army hospital because his health
was poor and my mother's health was poor.

Riess: Did he pursue a career in law?

Scott: Yes.

Riess: And was your mother a homemaker?

Scott: Yes, but she also assisted in this law. She wasn't actually a

lawyer. In the first place, part of the time he was having trouble
with his eyesight because he was in an automobile accident and
lost one eye, and the other eye was injured. So she would read
to him. She actually participated. During World War II, my mother
was a technician in hormone research at the university.

I went to University High School, which was in Oakland, but
the university had a part in its administration. It was established
for experimental programs and to train student teachers. There
was much more university training of teachers then, especially
for high school. They also were having experimental courses and
so forth. They had funds from various foundations and from the
state for experimental programs. The school was located on Grove
Street on purpose so that it would be in a district which was a
low income district. Because of the special programs it would
attract students from San Francisco and Berkeley and other places.

Riess: Did they try to have a balanced population racially?

Scott: That's right. Well, they wanted to have it represent this area.
I think that was reasonably successful in doing that because the
people in that district, close by, were admitted automatically.

150

Scott:

Riess:
Scott;

Riess;
Scott;

Riess:

But if you weren't there, particularly if you were from Berkeley,
you had to apply for admission. They had to restrict the number
of people coming from outside because it was too popular for people
coming to attend it from San Francisco and Berkeley and Piedmont
and other places.

Did it feel like an experimental place or just like a high school?

Well, you know, it was the only one I ever saw, but certainly the
student teachers played a big role in it. No, I don't think we
noticed the experimental element very much. I don't even know
that it was even all that strong.

Then during World War II, afterwards somehow it got a smaller
enrollment. No one seems to know why. They blamed [it on the
fact] that it didn't have a good football team. Of course, it
never had a good football team, so I don't think that was the real
reason.

Did it channel people into the university?

Well, it certainly was very heavy academically. There were other
courses available, but almost everyone was taking academic programs
and going then to the universities here. Not this university in
particular.

Was there a strong math program?

Yes, I mean all the courses were available, the four years [of
math] were available. I was the only girl, however, in the upper
courses. So there wasn't any channelling of people going into
it. At that time I thought I wanted to be either an astronomer
or an artist. I didn't know which one. I was carrying both those
programs. I kept on doing that when I first came to the university.

So you came to Cal. Did you want to go farther away if you could
have?

Scott: Well, I don't think I really had an option. You see, that was

during the Depression. I really didn't have an option about going
some place else. So, you know, I could live at home there. The
university was very inexpensive in those days. I think it was
$19 or something a semester. It was very inexpensive. I could
walk.

Riess: Did you join a sorority?

151

Scott: Yes, but I didn't stay in. That was for a peculiar reason. You
know, sororities meet on Monday night. I think they still do.
These meetings are mandatory. I had a course in astronomy, an
observing course, which was scheduled for Monday night. So, after
the first year I took this course and I had to become inactive
or whatever the right word was. I just stayed inactive after that.
I didn't really get that much out of it.

Riess: Did you have women professors in your college days that you remember?

Scott: No, there were none. I met some women professors, or I saw some
women professors. Well, in physical education, of course, but
you were thinking about academic courses. They were substitutes
for, like Professor [G.C.] Evans, for whom this building was named,
who taught quite a few of the courses in the programs that we took.
We are going to have that same trouble again, I am sure.

In September, he had to go to international meetings of some
sort. So then someone would come and teach his course for a couple
of times while he was gone. One time Professor [Pauline] Sperry
did and one time Professor [Sophia] Levy did. These were the two
women professors in the Mathematics Department. When Professor
John Macdonald retired, Miss Levy became Mrs. Macdonald, but not
before because of nepotism regulations.

It was through Miss Sperry that I first went to the Women's
Faculty Club. She was active in the Women's Faculty Club. I didn't
know [about] it at the time. She gathered together several women
graduate students in the physical sciences and invited us to lunch.
She took us over there and encouraged us to join. For graduate
students at that time, it would certainly cost very little. It
was 50c in those days, as I recall.

Riess: What year was that?

Scott: Oh that must have been 1941 or 1942. It was already during the
war.

2) Mathematics and Astronomy Departments, Berkeley

Riess: Wartime. That is traditionally the time when the strength of women
on campus is greatest.

Scott: On the contrary, it was not at all like that. I was a teaching
assistant, but I don't think it had anything to do with the war.
Then I stopped being a teaching assistant. I was teaching astronomy.

152

Scott: I started being a research assistant on this war project that
[Jerzy] Neyman had and I couldn't do them both at once. Then
occasionally I would go and be a lecturer in mathematics. I would
change back and forth.

Riess: That was when the statistics was just the Statistical Laboratory?

Scott: Well, you see, the Statistics Department didn't exist at that time.
It was part of the Mathematics Department. It had quite a little
autonomy, in teaching and in appointments, and it was actually on
the line budget; the Statistical Laboratory showed on the budget.

Neyman prepared that part of the budget and the courses and
so forth. Although it wasn't a separate department, it had almost
all the autonomy of a separate department, but that was something
that he fought for.

Riess: I thought it was an accepted tenet that when war comes, men go
to war and women are offered more tenured positions.

Scott: No, you didn't see that happening here nor in any other prestigious
university. There were some professors who went away. That's
true: [Charles B. Morrey, for example, and others. Some professor
did go away to work in Aberdeen or someplace like that.] But, that
did not mean that women were appointed except as occasional lecturers.
There were few women students.

Oh, there was one assistant professor, Ann Davis, but it was
just very unusual to have women students here. Julia Robinson
was a student. Very, very few.

Riess: Now you are talking in mathematics.

Scott: In mathematics. In astronomy there were a few more, but still
very few.

Riess: Is astronomy a sort of sister to mathematics?

Scott: Well, the proportion of women has always been higher in graduate
astronomy than in mathematics.

In those days there was another problem. At that time women
were not allowed to use the Mount Wilson telescopes, the big tele
scopes in California. It was just forbidden. That went on for
many years.

Riess: Forbidden!

153

Scott: Well, it is not too often that you can actually put your finger
on a discrimination and you know that you really can prove that
it was there. That was actually a well known fact. There was
no secret about it. Women were not allowed to use the big telescopes
at Mt. Wilson, the 60-inch and 100-inch.

Women were not on the staff. There are no women on the staff
at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories (the Hale Observa
tories, we call them now) at the present time. Only as assistants,
not as staff members, not as astronomers.

Riess: How about Lick?

Scott: Lick was different, there was no problem at Lick Observatory. I
was encouraged to go up there. I actually spent several summers
at Lick Observatory. No problem at all. [C. Donald] Shane, who
was chairman at Berkeley at that time, encouraged me always. He
arranged for me to spend a summer at Mount Wilson Observatory in
Pasadena assisting. But I wasn't allowed to use a telescope.
Other students who spent the summer there got to assist at the
telescope but not me.

Well, that is just the way it was. There were quite a few
women there who were assistants. They were called computers. We
would now call them maybe programmers or something like that. Each
one of them told me that I was really making a mistake trying to
get a Ph.D. in astronomy, because if I had a Ph.D. then they would
say that I was overqualif ied to work in astronomy. I wouldn't
be able to get a job in astronomy and I think that was really quite
true.

Riess: Was this an issue, then, that people were fighting? And you your
self?

Scott: No, I never heard anything of resistance and I didn't. I felt that
one "can't fight city hall." I just did whatever I could do. I
could go there and see what happened and do many things but not
everything. People were very nice to me but I didn't get to use
the telescope. I didn't get invited to the luncheons and so forth.
I was just treated differently.

3) Luncheon Groups at the Women's Faculty Club

Riess: When Pauline Sperry invited you to join the Women's Faculty Club,
or come to the meetings, how did she present it?

154

Scott: Oh, she took us to lunch first just so we could see what it was
like. She asked us if we would be interested in doing that. I
don't know whether everybody said yes. That was my impression
there was general agreement that we could eat there, both lunch
and dinner. We rarely did eat there although at that time there
were a let fewer places to eat than there are now.

Riess: It was a lunch club, that was all?

Scott: No, she also said there are other activities going on. Actually,
at that particular time there weren't many other activities going
on. There were annual dinners and things like that. There weren't
luncheon meetings of other sorts, which had happened earlier in
the 1920s as I saw from the old minutes, and actually Josephine
Smith talked to me about it too.

There used to be regular kinds of meetings where people
presented academic papers to get experience and criticism of these
papers, discussion about them before they presented them in other
places around, or at the same time they present them at other places,
Anyway, to support each other. Actually, there were more women
faculty proportionately in the early 1920s than there were later.

Riess: Yes, interesting, isn't it?

Josephine Miles talks about a group of twelve women that had
that kind of lunch and sharing of research papers in the 1940s
or 1950s.

Scott: No, that I didn't even know about. I knew about this earlier one
in the 1920s but that would be before she came here. You know,
it was her idea to start it again here. When did we first start?
Maybe three years ago or four years ago. We really worked hard
at it. What happens is that only what you might call old-timers
come. The new people for whom we really had it in mind, thinking
that we are helping, don't come. So, they certainly aren't getting
any help. I am not quite clear whether it would be helpful or
not, but they don't turn up.

The reason partly is, and I have the same trouble myself,
you get lots of classes and lots of meetings at noon time. You
just get loaded up at noon time. I don't think that is the only
reason. Once they get into trouble, like their promotion doesn't
go through, then they come with some enthusiasm. By that time
it is really hard to do anything in order to help them.

Riess: So you are describing more a support group than sharing research.

155

Scott: Well, we didn't want it to be just a support group. We were trying

for academic interaction. We didn't want to think of it as a support
group, indeed, quite a few people felt there was enough of those
support groups already.

Riess: The 1960s, yes, but now?

Scott: They exist but they are very inactive. So we really ought to have
something where the Women's Faculty Club would be doing something
for women faculty, getting them the chance to participate on some
kind of academic endeavors. They just don't seem to really be
interested. I don't know what to do about it. Right now we are
about ready to throw in the towel. We might as well meet and have
lunch after all, instead of trying to get a response.

Another problem that has always been with us is the number
of faculty in the club. There are not very many women faculty
anyway, so they couldn't have a club all by themselves. They need
to have other people there. I am in favor of having other women
there. I think that is just fine. But when I first came in, I
always had the impression it was being run by the librarians. I
mean, one probably had different impressions at different times.
It depends on who is in charge at any particular time. It just
seemed as if they were running everything.

In particular, I came into a huge disagreement. There was
another woman statistician at that time, Evelyn Fix. She since
died. But, we nominated a woman who was working actually in the
Radiation Lab, but also on the campus maybe she was in Donner
Lab, I don't remember the details but with a Ph.D., and publishing
papers, and so forth, to be a member of the Women's Faculty Club.
Before I did it, I asked her if she would be interested and she
said yes.

Then, to my horror, she was turned down because she wasn't
a member of the faculty. I really got very unhappy about that
because women researchers were, I thought, just as good if not
better than women secretaries or women librarians. I just couldn't
see why she was turned down. There was just some trivial inter
pretation of the by-laws. It didn't mention the word researchers,
and I was just really unhappy about that.

So, I said, and Evelyn also said, I think several of us said,
"If she is not admitted we're going to resign." We came to a real
impasse over that. I was just amazed that this was happening there.
So they changed their opinion after some months and agreed to admit
her. She died six months later. That was a really unfortunate
kind of situation.

156

Riess:
Scott:
Riess:
Scott:

Riess;
Scott:

Riess:
Scott:

When was this?

It must have been the late 1940s. I don't remember that now.

That's a period in the club that's described as sluggish.

Nothing much was happening. They weren't making extensive efforts
to get new members or anything like that. Actually, this woman
also was the wife of a member of our department, Stefan Peters,
who was teaching actuarial science and statistics in those days.

When Pauline Sperry approached Josephine Miles to join the club,
she said, "You owe it to women to do this."

It may be that she told us that too. It could be, it would be
just like here*.

Was she a real feminist?

Not to an extreme, but to a certain extent, yes.
outstanding mathematician. You know, adequate,
and pleasant person.

She was not an
She was a quiet

You weren't being beaten down in your own department so that you
would find a refuge in the Women's Faculty Club?

Well, no, I certainly wasn't thinking about that. My departments
were quite supportive. I certainly had problems. I am sure that
other women must have felt that too. But it didn't occur to me
that the Women's Faculty Club would help me with these problems,
let's put it that way. And it didn't.

The most supportive person for us was Neyman, for Evelyn Fix
and myself and the other women who have been in this department.
I think it just was his personality. Not very many outstanding
statisticians would ever have women students, or a woman appointment.
He was just very unusual in that respect.

Were there any other places that you would get together with women?

Oh, yes, but we did not meet as women; we met as students and then
as junior faculty. The atmosphere was friendly.

What was your living arrangement?

I lived at home. I still do so that hasn't changed at all. It
is still the same place. The only time I didn't would be when
I went to Lick Observatory or went to Stanford or something like
that; or on a sabbatical.

157

4) The Women's Faculty Club in the 1960s

Riess: It looks like the Women's Faculty Club dealt with the merger issue
from 1966 to 1976.

Scott: I don't know when it first came up. I just remember that there
was a good deal of worry before that time that no one was doing
anything. It was just kind of running down. The membership was
getting smaller and so forth. I think actually the same thing
was happening in the Men's Faculty Club simultaneously. We also
knew that people weren't joining there. People who were joining
weren't really paying any attention to what was going on.

There were several people who tried to do something about
it. One was Doras Briggs. Have you talked to her?

Riess: No, I haven't.

Scott: And Marian Diamond, and several other people were active. It must
have been in the early 1960s.

The merger wasn't really under discussion then. It was just
to kind of bring the Women's Faculty Club back to life and have
it be a viable place. Also to repair all kinds of things which
obviously needed repairing: install private bathrooms, you know.
It was really getting quite run down. It was already some fifty
years old. And looked it.

That was one of the things that people were worried about.
There was kind of a slow change. When I first became a member,
almost everyone who lived there had lived there for many, many
years. That was their home. They acted as if they really were
running the place. It was there not exactly for their benefit,
but you know what I mean. It was kind of funny. Like, when you
would bring a visitor there, there wasn't any staff there to take
care of them. So, if Miss May Dornin [resident] hadn't taken care
of them, they never would have been able to find their room, where
you are supposed to go for breakfast, or the key. We used to get
the keys in advance.

It wasn't well organized from the point of view of having
visitors come. Visitors clearly wasn't what anybody had intended.
It was organized for these permanent people. Some were a little
on the quaint side, and it was interesting for the visitors, anyway-
"just like Cambridge."

Riess: It was in a fairly weakened position then.

158

Scott: I really think so. Then there was this threat to do away with the
Women's Faculty Club and enlarge the School of Optometry to the
space the club occupied, just to completely get rid of it. That's
the way we heard the story described first, to get the space away
from us.

Then, in order to have some place to put these women, "Let
them join the Men's Faculty Club." But at that time we weren't
even allowed to go in and eat in most of the dining rooms of the
Men's Faculty Club. I was physically evicted from there more than
once.

Riess: You mean you made the mistake of trying to get in?

Scott: No, I was eating in some room where we had a reservation. For

one example I guess the most striking one there is a room called
the Director's Room that is on the corner. It had a round table.
This was some kind of olive association [meeting] . You know, this
silly grading that olives are medium, large, blah, blah sizes up
to jumbo. Well, they were having some meeting. (I don't know
why they thought a statistician would really help them.) Anyway,
they were meeting with statisticians to discuss how their sizing
could be redone and so forth. (I liked it the way it was before.
So I didn't even want to redo it.) But anyway, we hardly made
any progress on this luncheon at all when in came a man 'called
Mr. Smith who was a desk, a counter employee. He ordered me to
leave. Because I wasn't a member, therefore, I could not be eating
in this room, only members were allowed to eat in that room.

I was angry and embarrassed. So I said, "Well, you know that
very few people in this room are members. Why do you pick on me?"
He said, "Because I can look at you and see that you are not a
member. The other people I don't know." (Actually, I think he
knew every member very well, but that is detail.) Well, anyway,
they all got up and went out. And none of us paid.

You know, that doesn't really help that much. I was really
unhappy about the whole thing and it was very embarrassing. Then
we had to go somewhere else to get lunch and the whole thing was
a big flap.

Riess: But it didn't lead to internal reform at the men's club?

Scott: I protested to Professor Shane the first time that happened to

me. He said, "You just shouldn't take it so seriously. You can
just say that you could get thrown out of better places." I didn't
think that was the right attitude to take. He just didn't attach
that much importance to it .

159

Scott: There had been changes. I think Miss Miles told me that when she
first caine to Berkeley, you couldn't even enter the building. In
the '50s and "60s women could enter certain rooms, but not the
whole building. Now, women can join and there are no restrictions.

Anyway, I know that people were trying to get that space.
It is not quite clear whether they really could, it may have been
a lot of talk. The use of this land was given by the Regents to
the women faculty for this purpose. It is not that easy to undo
something like that.

There was a plan where they would destroy Senior Men's Hall.
Then, "This is an historic building. You can't destroy it."

Riess: What does go on there, incidentally?

Scott: Well, now it is condemned. You see, I don't think it is even
sensible to have it condemned, because it is a perfectly good
building. The reason I was told, but I don't know whether it is
really even true, that it is condemned because there is no running
water inside of it. That is a trivial thing to change. I mean
it could cost something but it couldn't cost very much. The big
argument was whether the foundations were good. Anyway, it is
just not used at all now. I think it is really wasteful. It would
be a nice place to have for meetings. They used to have senior
men actually meet there. Then they were having folk dancing which
was popular at the time. There were some complaints from the Men's
Faculty Club that they made too much noise folk dancing. I think
they could survive that.

Riess: It makes me wonder just what kind of men really joined the Men's
Faculty Club.

Scott: Well, you see, that was the same thing. At that time, almost all
of the men who were living in the Men's Faculty Club were old-
timers who were living there permanently. That was their home.

Riess: So there was that kind of cranky element. But as far as the club
having a real powerful role on campus the Women's Faculty Club
was sluggish, how about the men's?

Scott: I think it also was to a large extent. There are certain people

who meet there and it is still true today. There are certain tables
where people meet who are known very well to be local politicians
in the campus. [Joseph] Hodges, for example, goes to one of these
tables every day at eleven o'clock, just like a clock, off he goes.
I don't know that they are as important as they think they are
important in local academic politics, running things, getting and
making appointments and so forth. Nothing official, entirely
unofficial.

160

5) The Question of Merger

Riess: How were you involved, then, in the club in the 1960s?

Scott: Well, I certainly didn't want to have the club disappear. At first,
I heard that it was going to be destroyed. Just at that time,
we had already spent the last five years really working hard, raising
money and so forth to refurbish it and repair termite damage and
the whole bit. So it just seemed a little too much that all of
a sudden they are going to tear it all down, after all of this
struggle by women faculty and women at University Hall and other
women who really spent lots of time and effort doing that. They
also started working and getting more people, getting the membership
to go back up again. That just seemed to me to be entirely inappro
priate. Some members, such as Florence Minard, were active in
trying to preserve the club.

Riess: This fundraising was on a women's club level; it wasn't on a grand
scale.

Scott: No, no, it was local.

Riess: You didn't feel able to go back to the Regents for funding?

Scott: The Women's Faculty Club never went to the Regents for funding.
The Men's Faculty Club did that, but the Women's Faculty Club,
I don't know why they didn't do it. It has always been their policy
not to borrow money from the Regents. They had a mortgage once,
which they financed, and they burned that mortgage and then were
entirely clear and entirely independent.

I think they felt that they didn't really need to borrow money,
if we increased the rents, which they should have before then,
so that the rooms were really paying for themselves, plus a little
bit for repair. That was a real cause of trouble, that they didn't
have a repair fund. They wovld be able to just take care of them
selves. There were also some gifts from members. Whereas the
Men's Faculty Club borrowed a huge amount of money in order to
build a bigger wing and to refurbish the parts that they had before.
They have trouble with interest payments and were not repaying
the loan.

Riess: Well, I know, I certainly have some thoughts about how that is

just typical of the way men would deal with money and the way women
would deal with money.

161

Scott: Yes, it may well be true. When the money was given by Levi Strauss,
in honor of [Roger] Heyns and in honor of [Clark] Kerr, the donor
had the idea that the two clubs would join and that they would
admit not only faculty, but faculty wives and other persons. He
had a lot of changes which he had in mind that were supposed to
take place. I don't know how enthusiastic everybody was about
this, but I don't think there was any objection to having more
faculty and more faculty wives belong to the Women's Faculty.
I don't think that was a real problem.

The problem was, should we or should we not join with the
Men's Faculty Club? There were several things, one of them we
just finished mentioning. This was the huge debt that they had.
There were a lot of women who were convinced that once you joined
the two clubs, then you had your share of the debt. If you divide
the debt up among the membership, it was an appreciable load for
each person to take on, if somebody did the arithmetic. Anyway,
this was one of the arguments.

The other argument, used by Laura Nader and quite a few other
people, was: look at the way they treated us all these years,
why should we have anything to do with them? I think that argument
was very telling too. We found out that she also had been tossed
out of the Men's Faculty Club more than once. She was more agile
than I. She went around, climbed in a window, and came right back
in again. [laughter]

Riess: Had she been active in the women's club?

Scott: Not that I noticed. I think everyone is very busy. I have not
been active in it either. I am very busy.

Riess: Well, you got your name at the end of various petitions and onto
various committees.

Scott: Well, that is true, and then for a while I was a member of the
board. I worked and I really did my share. But I probably did
less than any other board member.

Riess: Was this when Peg Uridge was the president?

Scott: She was a very good and a very active president and really worked
in bringing the club up. She really worked hard on trying to
arrange this merger. For a while we had joint bookkeeping and
their bookkeeping was so awful. You never got a correct bill.

At that time, the manager that they had was very inefficient
and obnoxious. It wasn't a propitious time to have a merger. If
they asked today, I think people would be more willing.

162

Riess: Well, I think that if men and women merge in such a situation the
women would end up sort of bailing the club out.

Scott: That is what many people claim. We tried very hard to get some

way of voting that, at least as far as the property was concerned,
would be fair, and that was not agreeable. Anyway, eventually,
the Women's Faculty Club voted against the merger and therefore
the Men's Faculty Club didn't even vote. I have a very strong
hunch that they would have voted against the merger too. I don't
know, but just from the people that I talk to.

Riess: Josephine Miles said that you called her in to fight the merger
and you halted the momentum of the merger, and you went in and
bucked up this exhausted board that had no sense any longer of
direction to take.

Scott: I certainly didn't stage a big fight against the merger but I wanted
a fair merger. I said I just didn't know which way I wanted. I
was in favor of merger for some reasons if it would save the
Women's Faculty Club, I thought the club should be saved, the club
house should be saved. But if it would destroy the integrity,
then no. I spoke in both ways.

Riess: You were on a committee that included some of the die-hard anti-
merger people.

Scott: That's right but that was near the end of this period. As time

went on, more and more people were opposed, and they started lining
themselves up. I was on a committee concerned with this, especially
at the end, as time went on, and especially when I saw the voting
plan under the merger: the way they were going to have the voting,
and that they were going to charge very high initiation fees which
would go only towards retiring the debt of the Men's Faculty Club,
and that they were going to charge very high dues, even to younger
people then I was just completely opposed because we never would
get any women faculty because nobody can afford it, and who would
want to pay a bjg initiation fee to bail out the Men's Faculty
Club. It doesn't make sense.

Riess: Sounds like a hard thing was to make a strong argument for the
Women's Faculty Club.

Scott: No. We had good support. At first, it was very curious. This

money that was given was given in two pieces: I think maybe they
got some and then asked for some more and got some more. Anyway,
it came in two pieces. The first part, that was split between
the Men's Faculty Club and the Women's Faculty Club. It was supposed
to be used on the buildings.

163

Scott: It was split in proportion to the membership, so the Women's

Faculty Club got little. We used the part that we got to put in
those fire sprinklers. (Somebody from California Hall said that
that is what we have to use it for; for something like our club
house, sprinklers are now mandated, and that we are not living
up to code.) We agreed it would be important for safety. There
was a lot of discussion about how to put them in so they wouldn't
be too conspicuous. I think they did reasonably well. They
certainly are not beautiful, but anyway. So that was put in. Then
the other part of the money went for some termite work in some
other part, a lot of which was also paid by the Women's Faculty
Club itself.

Then all of a sudden somebody in the legal part of California
Hall I think Pete Smith decided that that was illegal, that none
of the money should go to the Women's Faculty Club, because it
was supposed to go to a merger and therefore should go to the Men's
Faculty Club. We were really angry when that happened. We really
made a fight about that. I mean that's outrageous, an arbitrary
decision. Eventually, they paid all the bills for the changes.
Rumor had it, but I really don't know what really happened, that
the donor's money all did go to the Men's Faculty Club, and the
money that paid this bill for doing the change-over in the Women's
Faculty Club came from some other funds. I don't know whether
that is a true story or not. I just really don't know, but that's
what I kept hearing.

Riess: When you say, "We got really angry," who is the "we" at this point?

Scott: Well, it probably was Josephine Miles and Peg Uridge and myself,
but also the members. I think everybody in the Women's Faculty
Club who was aware of the problem. Most people probably never
even heard it.

6) The Women's Center

Riess: I wondered whether, at least, all of this activity had the effect
of bringing you all somewhat closer together, or that it did some
thing fo- the club itself.

Scott: Well, there is another thing that was going on at the same time
which I found very troubling. For some years I think it was
partly through the Prytanean Society, but actually quite a few
women were interested in trying to set up what is now the Women's
Center on the campus. When that center was first ':p, it was
meeting in the Women's Faculty Club.

164

Scott: I thought that was really a very good use of the Women's Faculty
Club, that they used those downstairs rooms which were empty most
of the time. I think they used one or two rooms upstairs which
the club could afford to rent for offices. But, it is very
interesting. Many women, older members, felt that this was
terrible because these people were going to wear out the furniture,
they are going to spill food on the rug. You know how people talk.
Who cares?

Anyway, they really were hostile. The people in the center
couldn't help but feel this hostility. I think it was really
unfortunate. So there were these other themes which were going
on at the same time. Eventually the center was given space in
a temporary building.

Riess: Well, there was the talk about the diapers on the landing.

Scott: I know, how many times did that happen? I don't believe it ever

happened to tell you the truth, but you know what I mean. [laughter]
This is typical of the way they talk. I just could not get excited
about that. But there were plenty of women who talked that way.
It is very curious.

Riess: Tell me about Harriet Nicewonger.

Scott: I didn't really know her. I know that she was active in the library
and things like that, of the Women's Faculty Club. I didn't
really know her.

Riess : How about Emily Huntington?

Scott: Well, Emily Huntington I knew in a different way, you see. When
the Statistical Laboratory was first started, so in 1938, she was
a professor or associate professor don't ask me of economics,
the only woman in economics at that time, and she was doing some
kind of labor study, cost of living study of women. She came to
the department for advice and that is how I first met her. Neyman
ana I helped her with some of the studies that she was doing, and
some other studies that she did later on student housing and so
forth. We helped her with that. The Statistical Laboratory had
a board of advisors, or whatever the jargon would be, a really
unofficial board, but it was useful in discussions with the Mathe
matics Department. At least part of the time she was a member
of this board.

Riess: So you know her through that association.

165

Scott: That's right. Neyman knew her. Then, I remember that she was

already getting older and maybe she was already retired, or almost
retired I don't remember the details by the time this big thing
about the merger was. I don't remember her role in that particularly,
It just isn't in my mind.

Riess: But there must have been some women for whom the merger would mean,
"At last, a chance to be in the men's club!"

Scott: I didn't notice that. I would say definitely "No."
Riess: Well, Laura Nader?

Scott: No, she had the opposite opinion. She actually spoke in the

opposite way, that we just don't want to have anything to do with
them after the way they treated us.

Riess: I see, because their record had been so foul.

Scott: Yes. She wasn't the only one, but she spoke very vocally.

Riess: You were on a committee of five to prepare a proposal to combine
using the men's as the main clubhouse and the women's for multi-
use, including Prytanean. Also on this committee was Peg Uridge
and Katharine Stauffer, Mary Ann Johnson, Ruth Donnelly.

Scott: Ruth Donnelly was very active. Yes, I remember, very much so.

Riess: You worked out a proposal in June 19, 1971. Then, the next year
there was a brand new committee of five, Dorothy Randolph, Martha
Stumpf, Collette Seiple, Roberta Park. This ousting of the old
committee of five, did this mean anything?

Scott: No, I think this just shows that there wasn't general agreement

about what should be done with the Women's Faculty Club. I probably
got appointed when one thing should be done. I could see having
this women's center there. I certainly was in a minority on that.
Many of the women were in favor of having a women's center there,
but not all by any matter of means. I was shocked at how many
were really opposed to having a women's center there.

Riess: I suppose the residents were opposed.

Scott: Residents were opposed. They weren't the only ones. Somehow or
other, this business that you might hurt the furniture, you might
hurt the rugs, you might spill something I was just shocked by
that.

166

Riess: It wasn't that these women were younger and more issue-oriented.

Scott: That wasn't brought up, and that was what really bothered me. If
that was the real cause of trouble, I wouldn't have objected so
much. It was just property oriented. I thought that was dis
graceful.

7) Club Organization

Riess: Josephine Miles describes the board meetings, the ad hominem argu
ments, and always the detail, detail, detail.

Scott: Yes, the meetings last too long. I am all in agreement with her
about that. It is certainly true. I think it is just as true
of men's meetings and others. I went to a meeting at the YWCA
today, just drove me crazy, and I only stayed there for twenty
minutes. You know, you can waste more time on nothing.

Riess: So it takes a very strong woman to kind of override all of that?

Scott: Or to kind of relax through it, so to speak, until you get to
something more important to talk about.

Riess: But I mean very strong presidents. Has there ever been faculty
member presidents?

Scott: Yes, there have been, but not very often. Marian Diamond was.

Who else? I think that the one trouble would be that it is unusual
that a woman faculty member has enough time. It takes quite a
little time.

It is partly the way it is organized, which changes. We had
the managers participate. Now, it is organized in such a way that
the manager and the assistant manager are not invited to the
meeting, even for a short time. They don't get any directions
from the board itself. The president gives them the directions.
That takes a lot of time on her part, to supervise those directions,
and I think it kind of makes them a whole echelon lower down.

My idea of how to run a club is that although the manager
shouldn't be setting the club policy, she ought to really be
participating. If you want to change the policy you ought to
explain to the manager why and give her a chance to say, "Well,
this is not a good change." That is not happening now. I think
it is too dictatorial. I think that is the funny thing that happens.
Dictatorial in small things. Little tiny things get all blown
out of importance.

167

Riess: There was a suggestion in one of the memos I read that Henna Kay
and Natalie Davis and Richard Jennings and Robert Cockrell, would
be able to put the women's point of view over to the men. I don't
know what that situation might have been. I wondered if that brings
anything to mind.

Scott: Well, I don't know exactly what it is talking about, but generally
speaking, there would be a certain amount of truth in the following
sense: At that time, as I tried to describe to you before, in
the merger there was the problem: Who is going to vote? Where
is the money going to go? How much money are you going to charge?
And so forth. We were just losing out from our point of view on
all decisions. I don't even know for sure who was the member of
the committee at that time, probably Mrs. Uridge because she was
the president. I don't know who else was a member of the committee
at that time. I think it was felt that we should have a special
committee to go and talk to the Men's Faculty Club board of directors,
to make clear exactly what the causes of disagreement were.

Riess: The selection of this group is heavily weighted on the side of
the law.

Scott: Well, but Hernia Kay is a very persuasive speaker. At that time,
and still today, but at that time even more so, she was a leading
member of the [Academic] Senate. Natalie Davis was also very
persuasive.

Riess: Since men have become members of the women's club a little current
history do you think that it has given it a new strength?

Scott: Well, you see, something interesting happens that we see, they
always try to put and they explain that to you at least one
faculty member on the board of directors. Usually it is only one.
Now they are putting one on, but it is one of the men faculty
members. It is kind of like a token. And it keeps happening.
You kill two birds with one stone. [laughs] That is the way I
felt sitting there, listening to the nominations. I don't care.
I didn't say anything. I couldn't help but get this reaction because
there is this talk about 17 percent of the members are men, so
we need to have a man on the board of directors.

Riess: And what percentage is faculty? If 17 percent are men?

Scott: I don't know, probably 17 percent, probably. It is not many, that
is for sure. I really don't know, and I expect no one knows.

Riess: When you say "they" tried to put, aren't they elected?

168

Scott: But the nominating committee is somewhat circular in the sense
that there is just one name for each vacancy. Well, you could
nominate other people, that is for sure but no one ever does.
The nominating committee is appointed by the board, but pretty
much by the president.

Riess: I think that if there is only one faculty member on the board,
why that is a real sad state of affairs.

Scott: Well, there is no such law, don't misunderstand me. I think it

is almost the other way around, that it is not easy to find people
who want to serve on the board of directors because it takes time
and energy. The probably don't think it is all that important.

Riess: The group that lunches and talks about women's problems and so

on, and so on; Susan Ervin-Tripp, is that what you were referring
to?

Scott: Yes, she is one of the people who participates in it very strongly.

And she arranges other meetings in the club with young women faculty.
Invites them to lunch with her.

Riess: So it does exist now, this group?

Scott: Yes. But I think this year it has only met I was out of town
when it met I think it only met once in the fall. Earlier we
used to try to meet once a month. We are trying to meet once a
quarter. I don't know, we should call them and find out. I think
the person who is organizing it right this minute is Helen Eckert
of physical education.

Riess: It is only faculty?

Scott: Well, some non-faculty administrators are encouraged to come. But
the aim was at faculty, especially at young faculty. I think it
is petering out.

Additionally there is another ad hoc group, the Association
of Academic Women, started earlier. When this group was putting
pressure on to have more women appointed, and more women graduate
students and so forth, it was very active. Now, even though people
feel that not all of our problems are solved, we only meet when
there is something coming up, or there is something that we would
want to form a committee and go and talk to the chancellor about,
or whatever the case may be.

Riess: The association, is that something with branches on other campuses?

169

Scott: No, it is a completely local ad hoc group. There are similar groups
though. I don't think they even collected any dues for two or
three years. That will tell you how inactive it is.

Riess: If you had to fight the fight to keep the Women's Faculty Club
intact again, would you?

Scott: Oh I think so, yes. Well, you see, again, I am still of two minds

because when people in other universities hear that we have a women's
faculty club, and a men's faculty club, they think that is ridiculous.
I agree. They don't have that. In other universities women could
enter various rooms in the faculty clubhouse if they used the back
door or some such. I have done that in the past at Harvard, at
Chicago.

But that shows that things were even worse at Berkeley. Women
were not allowed to enter The Faculty Club fifty or sixty years
ago by any door. So they were essentially forced to form their
own club. I think it is an unusual situation, and just kind of
left over from that unusual situation. It doesn't mean that it
should be maintained forever. Probably the system that we have
now, that men can join the women's and women can join the men's,
gets around this big inequity in dues problem. That is probably
the main reason that you have so many men joining the Women's Faculty
Club. It is much, much cheaper.

Riess: I guess the issue is anything but totally dead.

Scott: Well, I think that is okay, you know. Right now, at least, we
say the food is better and I think that is probably still true.

Transcriber:
Final Typist:

Beverly Butcher
Catherine Winter

MARIAN DIAMOND

169a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Marian Diamond

1) Women's Faculty Club Board

2) Lunch Groups 17

3) Faculty Club Funding, Memberships, Parties 172

4) The Question of Where to Have Lunch 175

5) Administrative Interests

Marian C. Diamond, Professor of Anatomy, 1982

170

Marian Diamond

September 17, 1981

Interviewed in her office in the Life Sciences Building, UCB

1) Women's Faculty Club Board

Riess: A look in the Women's Faculty Club files shows me that when you
were on the board you worked very, very hard at fund-raising
projects. Would you recall for me some of those undertakings,
and which of them were most successful?

Diamond: We had a marvelous time with our fund-raising projects and raised
about $32,000 in all. Doras Briggs was a real assistant through
out. Many helped. It was a very social, cooperative effort.
We had foreign dinners, a cocktail party on the bay, and many
very enjoyable events, which proved most successful. The dining
room, before our efforts, was a dull, mossy green where few came.
The new room is as lovely, lively a luncheon room as we could
find anywhere.

[question off tape about talk of merger of the men's and
women's faculty clubs] I think everybody was interested in
evaluating a merger, but whether they were supporting it, I can't
say. During our time we felt very good because we [Women's Faculty
Club] were operating in the black and they [The Faculty Club] were
operating in the red. There weren't many benefits to be gained
for us by merging at that time. But without money you can't
run the club. When you're operating the club in the red, you're
very self-conscious about your abilities. [laughs] The money
aspect is a very realistic aspect, because the social, the academic
and the intellectual aspects we can get elsewhere.

2) Lunch Groups

Riess: It's interesting that you say you could get the intellectual
and social aspects of being with your peers elsewhere.

Diamond: You could with the men, if you wanted to, in your departments,

you know; if you make that effort, it was available there. But

you didn't know where the other women were on campus. And the only

place you were going to know that was through the Women's Faculty
Club.

171

Riess: What about the many women faculty who don't join?

Diamond: I really don't know. Some of us are just more social than others.
Four or five years ago I did organize at the club what we called
Ben's Forum, twelve senior women professors, and we meet once
a quarter, and I like very much to meet with those women. I
feel I'm touching base with them and I am finding out what they
are doing in their disciplines, whether it is chemistry or
astronomy or psychology or whatever. I find that is extremely
satisfying, from a basic academic woman's point of view.

Riess: I've been looking for evidence of something like that in the
club.

Diamond: I did it myself. I just picked women out there that I admired.
I didn't know them. Elizabeth Scott, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Bobbie
[Babette] Barton, Phyllis Blair. We didn't have anyone in physics
so I went to Hayward State and asked Ann Birge you know, Birge
Hall, the granddaughter, I guess, of Professor [Raymond T.] Birge.
We didn't have anybody in business, so I got Sarah Staubus who-
is a professor at Hayward State. Two very fine women, with
families. People I admired. Josephine Miles was another. I've
got the whole list here in my book but I'm just naming off some
of these twelve outstanding women.

So we meet once a quarter and we go around the table and sort
of say what's new with us and what's bothering us at the present
time, and you get an insight into common problems that we each
face, whether they are personal or professional. And I really
love it. We talk about having socials in the evening, but we
only had one they all came to my house one night, with spouses
or friends, for a potluck. I like the feeling that they are
all out there, even though I don't see them.

Riess: It's unaff iliated, even though you use the Women's Faculty Club
for your lunches?

Diamond: We did, until they gave us a difficulty with trying to get a

room once. They had a conflict. So then I moved over into the
men's club, because I was on their board then. So, would you
believe, we're meeting at the men's club at the present time.
They like the executive room in the men's club, the one Chancellor
Bowker had design- d for $32,000 for him to entertain his VIPs.
And since I'm on the board they let me use that for the ladies.
It's interesting the way we play back and forth. [laughter]

Riess: Was there any reason to think you couldn't have continued to
meet at the women's club?

172

Diamond: We could have gone back. It was just that that time it was awkward.
Riess: But is there an awkwardness of having an ingroup within the group?
Diamond: No, I think that's marvelous.

Then from what we established, Elizabeth Scott thought,
"Let's go back to having a women's faculty meeting maybe once
a month and having each faculty member speak about her profession."
So, we'd meet for lunch for the first half-hour and the second
half-hour we'd talk about what was new in our fields. That was
very nice, and that wasn't restricted that was any women faculty
member who wanted to join.

Ben's Forum consisted of twelve, because Benjamin Franklin
had twelve men that he met with just to discuss issues of interest
to the group.

Riess: Do they all appear regularly?

Diamond: Actually, the only time that everyone came was when President
[David] Saxon wanted to meet Ben's Forum. I thought that was
precious! Every single lady showed up for that, all twelve.
But Herma Kay doesn't show up on a regular basis. I send her
invitations because I'd like to know her better, but she obviously
is busy with other things. And a few Marian Koshland just
definitely said she wasn't interested. She evidently didn't
have that sort of need to meet with other women faculty members.
She dropped immediately.

Riess: Elizabeth Scott's group meets in the club?

Diamond: Right. In the board room. There again there's a nucleus of
women. Margaret Wilkerson, etcetera. I try to make that when
I can because I like to hear what other women are doing profes
sionally. I find that exceedingly nice.

3) Faculty Club Funding, Memberships, Parties

Riess: Exceedingly interesting, too, to me. So much of the recorded
history of the club is on money matters.

Diamond: It sort of has to be, in a way, to keep the club going. That's
what presses us. I didn't there to worry about how many pats
of butter to order, but that's the impression I came away with,
that these were important issues. Should we serve pats of butter,
or chunks which was cheaper.

173

Riess: Do they discuss the pats of butter on the men's club board?
Diamond : They let the manager do that .

The manager was always at our meetings [at the Women's
Faculty Club]. What I come away with, remembering, were the
little issues we dealt with, but what I liked most about being
on that board was that I met Aletha Titmus, I met Bobbie Barton,
I met Margaret Thal-Larsen. I really loved working with these
groups of intelligent women.

Riess: Do women join the men's club for reasons that have to do with
the power of the men on campus?

Diamond: I have no idea, other than that they enjoy men's company on a

social basis. We're having more social activities; we're having
dances now, and dinners. A big barbeque at the beginning of
the year for faculty and their families, held out on the lawn.
It's a lovely social aspect that the [men's] club didn't have
before.

Riess: Has the Women's Faculty Club over the years taken political stands
as a board on issues on campus?

Diamond: No, I don't believe so.
Riess: Has the men's?

Diamond: No. Again, as I look at our job, it's raising money, improving
the club physically and socially. We spend most of our time
with those issues, and our management. And the management will
bring the problems of salaries and so forth, and so we discuss
all of this.

I think we join the faculty clubs because it gives us a
chance to deal with all the people throughout the campus on a
more relaxed basis. And though we spend our time talking about
funding and things like this just as we write grants when we
are in the departments it's a different level at which you
approach it, and with a different emphasis. It's a much more
relaxed emphasis. And it's fun to be active [on the board];
you really get to know the people that way. You take our board
we've got a former dean of the Business School, a vice chancellor
of finance, the former dean of the School of Social Welfare.
These are very substantive directive fine human beings, and to
sit there and argue about various issues of the club is pure
delight.

Riess: People like Josephine Smith on the Women's Faculty Club board.

174

Diamond: Yes, I wouldn't have met her otherwise, and I loved her clear,

sharp twinkling eyes as she would work. I can see her spreading
everything out and following it, the black line versus the red
line, you know, how we're moving along.

Riess: Does the composition of the board of the Women's Faculty Club
reflect the membership?

Diamond: I think it does. Mary Lou Norrie was on the board, and she was
faculty. So there were about five of us, and about five that
weren' t .

Riess: But considering the fact that the great number of members are
from the nonacademic side?

Diamond: Then obviously they went overboard to try to get more faculty

to make it look equal on the board as far as campus representation
was concerned.

Riess: The Men's Faculty Club is also for non-academics?

Diamond: Yes, let me just think on the board. Yes, there are a few there
who are not academicians. But I think mention is made of this,
that they don't feel there is enough of a meshing between adminis
tration and faculty. We do have membership cocktail parties
where everybody is invited, but it's true that when I go it seems
to me that there are more administrative than faculty members
there. I don't know offhand the ratio for membership in the
men's club.

We've also had associate memberships, for people who work
for the Bancroft Library or for the Art Museum or for the Lawrence
Hall of Science, who dedicate their efforts for the university,
to get them associate memberships. We wrote to their. presidents
to ask them to submit names to us of people that we could then
invite to increase our membership. And we've had a membership
drive to bring j.n people in the community we don't want it to
be opened to the community, but leaders in the community so
the Chamber of Commerce has sent us a list of outstanding people.
Our membership drive tried to bring those people in, and we had
a luncheon for them. This was my function. So I sat next to
the president of the Bank of America [laughing] or wherever,
from the city, and they were very pleased to be brought in, to
know that they could bring their guests to the Men's Faculty
Club for lunch.

What we used to do in the women's club for associate members,
we would just tap outstanding women in the community, one or
two, but we never had a real drive to bring in outstanding women.

175

Riess: This all reflects the need to have more dues coming in?

Diamond: Right. And interests, and to make the club more alive, more
meaningful to the university and the community.

When it comes to the Christmas party, this is when you see
everybody. Last year we had three hundred at the Christmas party,
and had to turn away that many. So this year we're going to
have two nights of the Christmas party. I fought hard for that.
Our board said, "No, only one night, because it was the Christmas
party," and I said, "Let's ask the membership." So we sent it
out to the membership and it turned out that about three hundred
to fifteen wanted two nights so that everybody could come. So
I feel very good. We had a little running feud on that one!
[laughter]

Riess: Why is it such a wonderful party?

Diamond: Because it's the one time of year when everybody really gets
together, sings together, relaxes together, and it starts the
whole Christmas spirit. [phone interruption]

The Monks sing faculty and administration dressed in robes,
men with gorgeous voices who volunteer. It's become a tradition.
They walk among the tables singing their carols, which is always
a delight.

Then we have a Christmas skit, and this is written by one
of the deans of the Law School, Jim Hill. Sometimes Professor
[James] Cahill will write it. They rotate around, those who
like to write skits. And over the years six of us have been
in it; even though some of us cannot sing at all, we still
participate. The skit deals with an issue that's current and
becomes a very good musical.

Then we all sing Christmas carols at the end. It's just
the one time that the faculty gets together in a relaxed fashion
on this whole campus f or the whole year! [phone interruption]

Riess: And the Women's Faculty Club is invited?
Diamond: [going to the phone] They're invited, yes.

4) The Question of Where to Have Lunch

Riess: Is there any way in which belonging to the Women's Faculty Club
has actually advanced your career here at the university?

176

Diamond: I've never looked on it that way. I'm not one who's out for
advancement. I work because I love to teach and I love to do
my research and I like to work with people. I only work to
advance myself if I feel it's unfair. And there have been
occasionally times when it's been unfair, and then I've gone
in fighting. But no, I went there because I want to interact
with people and see what they're thinking, find out what the
other women's problems are and what the benefits are, both
academic and social. I like to go to their luncheons where you
learn about their fields. I like to hear about what Elizabeth
Scott's doing, or what Hanna Pitkin in political science is doing.
I admire Hanna, and I see her from afar, and I read about her
and I want to go and listen to her. I go for that reason.

Riess: I must say it sounds like that wasn't just automatically a part
of the club, that it took some pushing, some structure.

Diamond: I think so, very definitely. I didn't just call up women and
have lunch with them up there, because I like the group effort
and the interaction, it's a little more dynamic in some ways
restrictive, but I think we all feel good when we leave. And
we use the women's club for it.

Riess: And you think the clubs should be separate?

Diamond: Yes. I like having the two, and I like some days, if I'm taking
students, to be able to say, "Where do you want to go? Men's
or women's club?" And I tell them the virtues of each and they
can choose, because every week I take students to lunch.

Riess: Pretend I 'm a student. What are the virtues of each?

Diamond: What are the virtues of each? Well, you have better salads at
the women's club, and I like eating outside. And they treat
you in a more feminine fashion; it's more a ladies club. The
men's club is rugged and you feel the history, the dynamics of
intellectualism of these mer come through the walls. This dark,
uncarpeted in some areas, place. You feel tradition more in
the men's.

The women's is more airy, lighter, and beautiful. Its
antiques are lovely. I love to show people the quality. I feel
elevated in spirit by going into the women's club and I don't
necessarily feel elevated going into the men's. I feel more
traditional and more academic.

Riess: And if you were taking a visitor from Harvard?

177

Diamond ;

Riess:

Diamond ;

Riess:
Diamond :

Riess:

Again I'd ask them, and see what they would say. I always give
them a choice. I like sort of going into the men's for lunch
and telling them that women were not allowed in the Great Hall.
"Let's go eat in the Great Hall, because we weren't allowed in
here previously." And I like telling them how when I first went
in that club the men used to say, "What are you doing here?!"
And now that I'm vice president of their club, it's a good feeling.
I feel I've come a long way in acceptance or maybe it's just
age. Whatever it is, I feel comfortable in both clubs.

So you would say that one of the effective aspects of the merger
talk was to bring the two clubs together.

To discuss whether they should really exist. There are those
who feel they should [merge] , for food reasons or whatever, for
economic reasons. But I still think it's kind of fun sometimes
to just feel like you're going to eat at a women's club. They
are mixed now, but you still have that background feeling that
this is for women.

When were women first allowed in the Great Hall?

In that merger period. And you still don't sit at the two round
tables at the entrance. Those are sacrosanct, there's no doubt
about it. I haven't been invited to sit there yet. One of these
days I'll ask Michael Goodman if he will let me sit at the head
round table where "The Professors" sit.

Michael Goodman is a very long-standing member,
bloods

Are there young

Diamond: Who sit at that table?

Riess: In general, at the men's club?

Diamond: They don't have has many junior members as they would like. This
is something we'd like to include. But again, you're not going
to get the assistant professors joining the men's club, except
for those who want to promote their careers or think they might
by that route. Most of them are staying home in their departments
and working very hard to be sure they becomes members of the
faculty and get a tenured position. So I think that's the
rationale for why we don't have so many junior members. Once
they know they're going to be here a while, then they begin to
look outside their departments for other associations. I think
it's a very reasonable approach.

178

5) Administrative Interests

Diamond: I wouldn't spend that much time as a junior faculty I did though,
however. It's interesting. I'm contradicting myself. Because
I also wanted to see other women. But I'm a social character.
Promoting my career isn't that important.

Riess: You were junior faculty then?

Diamond: I was junior faculty when I became a dean, and they said, "You

have to realize that this doesn't mean you're going to be permanent
faculty, just because you've come into the dean's office." I
started as assistant dean in the College of Letters and Sciences
and worked up to associate dean from about 1967 to 1972. In
fact my time then was very much involved with administration
and I dropped my association with the Women's Faculty Club at
that time; I got off the board.

It's interesting, most people wouldn't want to be a dean,
but I wanted to really work in advising. I disliked our negative
attitudes towards advising in this university. I thought I could
get in there and make advising an important part of a faculty
career. And eventually advising is on the faculty biographical
form now, how much time you spend with research, teaching, and
how much time you spend advising. So I think by making a little
noise we brought it along; it served a purpose. You spend an
awful lot of time talking to students when you're not out teaching.
But you're helping them.

I feel good in that respect, that I'm not saying all
professors spend a lot of time with it, but at least they have
to designate how much time they do spend. And those who do spend
a lot, now will get more credit. Not as much as for teaching
and research, but at least some acknowledgment that you do spend
time trying to help students find their way around this big
university.

Riess: Are committee meetings of faculty ordinarily held at the clubs?

Diamond: They frequently meet at The Faculty Club for lunch. It depends
on the committee, and how long a period you have to work. Short
committees ^ery definitely have met at the men's, primarily,
because they have more rooms available. They're going to open
up their whole recreation room now, and it will no longer be
a recreation room, it will be a committee room. I fought that
one too. [laughter] I lost there.

179

Riess: You sound like a good fighter.

Diamond: Well, what's the purpose of having the brain to give you new
ideas, if you don't try to use them?

Transcriber: Suzanne Riess
Final Typist: Catherine Winter

MARY ANN JOHNSON

179a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Mary Ann Johnson

1) The Academic and the Non-Academic Sides of the Club 180

2) The Board of Directors of the Building Committee, 1954-1967,

and the Building Crisis 183

3) The Board of Directors of the Association, 1965-1967, and the

Fundraising Projects 189

4) Professional Advancement 191

5) Issues of "Aging Residents" and Hiring Managers 195

6) The Ad Hoc Committee and the Joint Operations Committee, and

the Haas Gift 196

7) The Club Operates in the Black, 1977 201

Mary Ann Johnson, Assistant University
Material Manager, Office of the Vice-
President of Business and Finance, 1977

180

Mary Ann Johnson

June 16, 1982

Interviewed in the Library of the Women's Faculty Club

1) The Academic and the Non-Academic Sides of the Club

Riess: A little bit about you how long have you been on this campus?

Johnson: You mean my professional background? Well, I started in the

purchasing department in January of 1938, and I stayed in that
department (it had some changes of names through the years) .
I retired in 1977 as the assistant university materiel manager.

I was always involved with all the campuses, not just Berkeley.
First we called them statewide, then university-wide and then
Office of the President. Finally they were calling it systemwide
administration and it was still that when I retired in August
of 1977.

Riess: Are you a graduate of the university?

Johnson: Yes, I graduated in 1937 in economics and then I went to business
college. 1 came back in January of 1938 as a clerk in the
purchasing department. Women, even though they had the education,
weren't being given the jobs that men with comparable education
were given. However, this was also still in the Depression days,
so I felt I was quite lucky to have a job. It was, through the
years, a very enjoyable experience. I love the place.

Riess: That's a good introduction.

Were you aware at the time, 1938, of the Women's Faculty
Club?

Johnson: Well, not in the beginning. I did join in 1947, and that was

on the invitation of Vera May Twist, who was the administrative
assistant in the School of Business Administration, and a long
time member of the club.

Riess: As a female employee on campus, what were your meeting places
with other women?

181

Johnson: Well, mainly the restaurants down on the avenue. When I came,
Sproul Hall hadn't been built, the Student Union hadn't been
built, and that block between Bancroft and Sather Gate was all
businesses and restaurants. And one of the favorite restaurants
and meeting places was the Black Sheep, which later moved over
onto Bancroft Way. Another was The Varsity on the corner of
Bancroft and Telegraph.

Riess: The Black Sheep must have been packed, because everybody says
it was the best.

Johnson: Oh yes, she had marvelous food. So that was the main gathering
place at that time. There really wasn't a restaurant on the
campus that I can remember.

Riess: Were there social hierarchies among the groups of women that
got together for lunch?

Johnson: Oh, I don't think so, not that I was really aware of. It would
be mainly the people who were working first in California Hall,
which is where I started, and then in Sproul Hall. The women
in the academic departments, I think, according to the building
they were working in, that's where they found their friends.
While I knew a number of people through telephone contacts, they
were just a voice to me. So there really wasn't a lot of mixing.
I had a few friends up at the rad lab who would come down to
the Black Sheep and we would have lunch together. But I didn't
have access to the Women's Faculty Club until 1947, when I became
a member.

Emily Huntington was the secretary at that time and she's
the one who signed my membership card, which I looked at just
recently. Emily just passed away.

Riess: She was in economics also.

Johnson: Yes, although I hadn't had her as a professor when I was a student.

Riess: Was that the usual experience, that one was invited to be a member
of the club rather than initiating it on your own?

Johnson: At that time, yes. They had some strict criteria as far as the
staff people who were eligible to become members. You had to
be a certain level I think administrative assistant at that
time. Since then they have lowered that to what used to be called
principal clerk or secretary; I'm not sure what the titles are
now.

182

Riess: I saw, just this morning, that in the early '60s the Board of

Directors was not only named, but titled. "So and so, Placement
Officer III," and I thought that was interesting.

Johnson: Yes, that is. If I was aware of it, I've forgotten it.

Riess: I should think there would be an effort, once people were in
the club, to consider everyone to be equal.

Johnson: Uh, no. There was a little difference between the women who

were academic people and the non-academic people. And I think
that I was one of the first presidents who was not an academic
person.

Riess: The "little difference" was perceived by whom?

Johnson: Well, I think by the academic people. Catherine Quire was

president at one time [beginning, 1950s], and she had been in
the Dean of Students Office. I think she was an assistant
professor or associate professor, so she did have academic
standing. I can remember her saying when she was president,
while she came out of the Dean of Students Office (which was
considered non-academic), she had an academic appointment, so
that made a little difference to her.

I can't say definitely that there were two classes of
members, but generally it was the academic women who were the
leaders. And originally, from what I find in the files, the
membership was limited to academic women, but it was very soon
after that that they opened it up, within a year. They just
didn't have that number to draw on.

Riess: If you were a non-academic and the president of the board, you
might have a hard time asking a full professor to be in charge
of, say, the hospitality committee.

Johnson: Well, I really wasn't aware of that and had no problem getting
the cooperation of all the directors on my board.

Riess: There weren't things that were considered to be menial?

Johnson: No, I don't think so, not in that respect. But there was just
the feeling that the president of the club should come from the
academic side. I don't know, though, about Lucy Ward Stebbins,
who was the president for so many years. She was the founder
of the club; she was the one who originally took the initiative
to get the women together.

Riess: She was a professor of economics.

183

Johnson: Was she also a professor? I just knew her as dean of women when
I was on the campus and then later. She was still living when
I joined the club, but she had given up the presidency. But
she was president for, oh, twenty-five years I would say, and
she really ran the club . Although in looking through the files
I see that there were others Sarah Davis was another great
prominent name, and Edith Coulter. I meant to get at those club
files and look more stuff up, but I didn't get to it.

I thought I was making headway in that vault, and all of
a sudden Katherine Williams called me and said they've pulled
out a whole bunch of boxes from a back room and would I come
in and help her go through them. So we've been working on the
stuff that was just piled up there in that little room off the
office. And we still haven't gotten through all of that. Now
the things that occurred in the '20s I've put aside to be sure
that it isn't something historically important but all the chits
that were signed in the '40s and the payrolls

Riess: You're hanging onto all of that?

Johnson: No, we're tossing it away. [laughing] Nobody's ever going to
look at that and I can't see that it would have any historical
benefit.

Riess: Those summary histories in the vault that were done by Sarah
Davis and then by Clarus Faubion are just excellent. When I
go to the original material, I see the summaries have summarized
it very, very adequately.

Johnson: I've tried to save the announcement of each annual meeting. I
think that would be of importance to have, and of course the
minutes are all there bound. And a copy of the invitation for
each one of the special events and that's frustrating because
sometimes it has the day and the month, but not the year!

2) The Board of Directors of the Building Committee, 1954-1967,
and the Building Crisis

Riess: So, in 1947 you say you became a member.

Johnson: I served on, oh, I think the library committee, and the hospitality
committee. But it was in 1954 that I was elected to the Board
of Directors for The Building Committee of the Women's Faculty
Club, Inc. I don't know if you know the distinction.

184

Riess: I know a little about the distinction historically, and I know
that that distinction ended in 1966. Let me just back up to
the extent of asking whether people just joined the club and
didn't take any committee or board role.

Johnson: Oh, yes, there were many, many members who all they wanted to
do was to have a place to come and eat and meet their friends
and come to the evening functions. They really didn't want to
be burdened with working on a committee or on the board.

Riess: And so why did you want to? Can you say?

Johnson: Well, I don't know that I particularly wanted to [laughter],
but Vera Christie was on the nominating committee that year.
She was quite active in the club and had been a member for many
years. I can remember her calling me and asking me if I would
stand for election to the board, and I didn't even know what
the Building Committee was at that time. I was flattered and
accepted, not knowing what I was getting into.

Edith Coulter was treasurer of the Building Committee and
the watchdog of the finances. "The Building Committee of the
Women's Faculty Club, Incorporated," was the corporation and
it was the organization that sold the bonds to raise the money
to build the building. It owned the building. The Women's
Faculty Club, which was an association, paid rent to the Building
Committee, ran the dining room, and rented the rooms and so forth.

The Building Committee was responsible for the building
structure. When we had to put a new roof on, it was the Building
Committee who had to pay for it. It's only source of funds was
the rent that the Women's Faculty Club paid, and there were some
pretty bad times when the Women's Faculty Club didn't have enough
money to pay the rent.

Riess: You mean bad times over all the years?

Johnson: Over all the years. Going through the records I can see way

back in the beginning it was just always a struggle to get enough
money to keep going. And when you think of what those women
did to get this building built. They couldn't borrow from the
bank, because they didn't own the land on which the building
was going to be built. It's the Regent's land. So that was
why they formed this Building Committee which sold the bonds
that raised the money to build the building. I think they were
twenty-five year bonds. The bonds were paid off sometime in
the late '40s, shortly after I became a member, and they had
a big celebration of burning the mortgage.

185

Johnson: But all of the money that they could get together went to paying
off those bonds. And, therefore, the upkeep of the building
suffered. Almost the first thing we did after the bonds were
paid off was to replace all the mattresses which had been on
the beds for twenty-five years.

Riess: It sounds like a possibly very antagonistic situation with the
two boards of directors.

Johnson: I don't think so, because it was common membership. If you were
a member of the Women's Faculty Club, you were automatically
a member of the Building Committee of the Women's Faculty Club.
The two organizations had different boards of directors, but
they were drawn from the same membership.

Riess: You're defining the Building Committee as the entire body.

Johnson: No, well, I would say the Board of Directors of the Building
Committee. And then, in the early times, specifically, Edith
Coulter, who was the treasurer.

But there was no way, when the Women's Faculty Club did
not have enough money to pay the rent, there was nothing that
that Board of Directors of the Building Committee could do to
force them to pay the rent [chuckles]. The money just wasn't
there. There would be several months when the rent would be
waived. But they managed to pay off those bonds and have this
house clear.

Then, in 1957, the kitchen was in bad shape, but we got
a gift from the Regents of $30,000 to do over the kitchen.

Riess: That was an unsolicited gift?

Johnson: Well, no, we wrote to President Sproul and told him we were in

bad trouble. What we wanted in the beginning, what we were asking
for, was a loan, but the Regents gave us the money.

And when we finished doing the kitchen over, we had two
or three thousand dollars left that we hadn't spent. So we
wanted to give it back, and Sproul told us, "No, you keep it
and use it some other wav "

Riess: [chuckling] Isn't that interesting that the women would want
to give it back.

Johnson: We were so conscientious! Now, the men got a big loan from the
Regents at one time, but they've had quite a struggle and I
understand that all they've been able to do is pay the interest
on that loan; they have never paid anything back on the principle.

186

Johnson: In later years, the Regents did adopt a policy of lending money
to the various clubs. When the university was growing and the
other campuses were being developed and they were trying to start
up faculty clubs on each campus, the Regents did help. Their
policy, if I remember correctly, was they would lend one-third
and would give one-third and the organization itself would have
to raise one-third.

Sometime during the period I was on the board for the
Building Committee, we had a struggle with termites. They were
in the attic and had come from Senior Men's Hall. They were
unusual termites [laughter]; they were the flying kind and that's
how they got in the attic instead of the basement. But because
they had come from Senior Men's Hall, the Berkeley campus paid
for part of the cost to exterminate them.

Riess: Once the mortgage was burned, why did the corporation continue?

Johnson: It was brought up at that time, as I remember, and it was Barbara
Armstrong's recommendation that the organization not be changed,
that they continue to have the corporation represented by the
Building Committee and the association represented by the Women's
Faculty Club. I don't know the reason for that recommendation
but they went along with that.

Then in 1965 I became president and we started having a
fund-raising campaign.

Riess: Well, let's set the scene for your presidency. Gertrude Mitchell

had been the president and the records refer to those years,

the early '60s, as "years of crisis." Were you still on the
board of directors of the corporation?

Johnson: No. I think I left that probably in 1962.
Riess: What was the crisis then?

Johnson: The building was almost falling apart. It needed to be painted
inside and out. The rooms were badly run-down. Major plumbing
repairs were needed. But there just wasn't the money. The dining
room kept running a deficit and the rooms were in such bad shape
that we really couldn't charge very much rental per month.

And it was a different kind of living arrangement. Most
of the women who were living here had been here for many, many
years. It was getting the reputation for being an old ladies
home. So the rooms that we did have available for rental were
not very attractive from many standpoints. We just weren't
generating the money to be able to do the things that needed
to be done.

187

Johnson: Soon after I became president we decided to have a fund-raising

campaign and there were many things that we did. The first thing
that we did was to raise $12,000 to redo the dining room. The
dining room is now pretty much the same shape as when we redid
it back in 1966 or '67.

Riess: The dining room was renovated in the period from January to March
in 1967.

Johnson: And you see then, that's when we began to have to work so closely
with the Building Committee. We found that actually the two
boards were meeting jointly. It became very obvious: "Why
do we have these two organizations?"

The other thing that became a concern, the Building Committee
being a corporation, the directors were protected more or less
from any lawsuit that might be brought if somebody fell, or was
otherwise injured. At that time that was becoming a great concern
because we were hearing about all these lawsuits that were being
brought by people who had been injured in something or other.
Well, the directors for the Building Committee were protected
because it was a corporation, but the directors and the members
of the Women's Faculty Club didn't have that kind of protection,
because they were not a corporation. So that was another big
reason why we decided that the time had come to have just one
organization.

Doras Briggs, who was president of the Building Committee
at that time, and myself as president of the Women's Faculty
Club, and Bobbie Barton, who was on the board but was also our
legal advisor, worked to change the articles of incorporation
and the bylaws to put the two organizations together. It had
to be voted on by all the members, and I think that was done
at the annual meeting in 1967. Then we became one organization.
We put the two boards together. Originally there were five on
one board and six on the other board and we put them together
and had eleven members on one board.

Riess: Was Barbara Armstrong still around?

Johnson: No, she wasn't too active. I think she was still living at that
point, but she had retired. Aletha Titmus, who was associate
counsel in cne General Counsel's Office, was also on our board
and she, too, contributed [her expertise]. Aletha later became
chairman of the Heyns committee.

Riess: [laughter] You're going too fast; I'm going to have to slow

you down. The years under Gertrude Mitchell's presidency, was
there any real facing up to problems, or would you say those
were stagnant times and that when you came in there was a sense
of purpose?

188

Johnson: They weren't stagnant, but people just didn't have the push to

do something. I think I was very fortunate when I became president
that there were so many women serving on the board who were such
vital people. They had struggled during Gertrude Mitchell's
presidency, recognizing the problem, but not really coming to
grips with it to try to do anything about it.

We did a lot of things, but in the long run we weren't able
to get enough money to do the things that needed to be done with
the building. We did raise the $12,000 to redo the dining room,
but we had a program we wanted to raise something like $60,000
so we could get another $120,000, part gift and part loan from
the Regents, so we could do the whole building over.

Riess: You had had an estimate from somebody as to the needs and costs?

Johnson: Ken Cardwell was the architect that we had for redoing the dining
room. We had some advice from Ken Cardwell as to what should
be done, with an estimate of about how much it would cost.

Riess: Did you go to the Regents in search of that money?
Johnson: Not at that time. We needed to first raise $60,000.
Riess: Was that considered?

Johnson: Well, now, yes. We did write a letter to Chancellor Heyns at
that time about the needs for the Women's Faculty Club.

Riess: Before 1966 a committee from the board had gone to the chancellor
to ask for a dining room subsidy, and this had led to the appoint
ment of the ad hoc committee. So that must have been the time
when Heyns suddenly became aware

Johnson: Of the problems. Well, our letter was referred by Chancellor
Heyns to President Kerr. And I can remember the letter came
back to us with a little note from President Kerr which said,
"What do the ladies want?" [laughter]

We thought we had been quite specific that we wanted some
help to do this building over. But he apparently didn't think
we were specific enough and we all had a chuckle over that
"What do the ladies want?"

Riess: Do you think that in fact you hadn't come right out and said
you wanted x-amount of money?

189

Johnson: I think that was it. We said our building was in bad shape

and we needed to have all these changes made. But we weren't
specific in saying, "Please give us some money to do this."

And then I think after that was when Chancellor Heyns
appointed this committee of the two representatives from the
two clubs. Now do you want me to get into that at this point?

3) The Board of Directors of the Association, 1965-1967,
and the Fundraising Projects

Riess: I want to get into that, but not yet. As far as fund raising

goes, first of all you said that you had a marvelous board. On
your board were Betty Neely and Clarus Faubion and Marion Diamond
and somebody "Heiss."

Johnson: Ann Heiss, Clara Wightman, Adeline Larson, Aletha litmus. And
Doras Briggs at that time attended because she was president
of the Building Committee. The composition of the board changed
during the two years. Bobbie Barton was on the Building Committee
board too at that time.

Riess: Did you have anything to do with the strength of your board?

As a president, I know that you're chosen from among the directors,

Johnson: .After the annual meeting, the Board of Directors have an organi
zation meeting, and that's when they elect their officers. So
it was in April of 1965, after the annual meeting, that I was
elected president. Clara Wightman was elected vice-president.

As far as determining the officers or the members of the
board, I wouldn't have much to do with that. The terms are
staggered, so there were still some members on the board who
had been on there the previous year . Those who were nominated
at the same time I was nominated had been chosen by the nominating
committee, so I had really nothing to do with the selection of
the women who were serving on the board when I did. That's why
I said I was so very lucky. There was just this very dynamic
group of women who had a lot of good ideas and the energy and
enthusiasm to carry it out.

Riess: Fund raising does take a particular kind of willingness to really
work. How did you actually raise that $12,000?

190

Johnson: I thought about a number of the things that we had. We had an

art show here in the club that Aletha litmus handled. (Her name
now is Aletha litmus Owens, and presently she is general counsel
for the Hastings School of Law. At that time she was an associate
counsel in the General Counsel's Office down in University Hall.)
She headed the art show, which was a very elegant affair, here
in the club. Some of the members contributed to the exhibition.

Riess: From their personal collections?

Johnson: Uh huh. And some of the things that we had were for sale, and
there were a number of people who bought things.

Riess: Was this new, to open the club up in this way to the public?

Johnson: Yes, it was. We had a very large crowd who came.

Riess: People just plain curious about the club?

Johnson: 1 think it was mostly the campus community and our friends.

We had a dinner party in San Francisco. We went to one
of the ACT plays, and beforehand there was a wine and cheese
tasting party across the street in some building there. It was
a Sunday afternoon. Katherine McGrail was the chairman of that
particular event. Katherine McGrail was the coordinator of
University Telecommunications.

One very fine event was Mme. Pandit, who spoke down in
Pauley Ballroom, and Jane Welcome was the chairman of that event.
Now, she wasn't on the board, but she was one of the members
that we got to take over the event. And that drew a very large
crowd. Elinor Heller, who was a regent at the time, introduced
her [Mme. Pandit], and then we had a reception here after the
lecture.

Riess: Was Mme. Pandit staying at the club?

Johnson: She stayed at the club one or two nights at that point. But

no, I don't know how Jane arranged for this. She was visiting
in the country and we sponsored the event.

Riess: Tickets were sold.

Johnson: Yes. And that was again to the general public, mainly the campus
community. We had a very large crowd.

Riess: So you're drawing basically upon the campus community in all
the events.

191

Johnson : Yes .

Riess: Did this open up the club in a way that resulted in a greater
membership for the club do you think?

Johnson: Well, there was a small increase in membership. But for many,

many years it stayed pretty level at about three hundred members.
We'd get a number of new members, but then people would leave
or they'd die and it just seemed to average out. So the large
increase in membership hasn't come until just very recently.

And we had a cruise on the bay. That was chaired by Betty
Strehl. (She is now Betty Kerley, the wife of vice-chancellor
[Robert] Kerley.) She was responsible for the cruise on the
bay. That was an evening affair. It was not a supper or a dinner
of any kind; we just had this cruise on the bay. And that
brought out a good crowd and was a very interesting evening.

Riess: Were there members of the club, while this was all going on,
who thought that this was all very inappropriate?

Johnson: No, I don't believe so. We began to generate this enthusiasm

and people participated. I mean at least they came to the events,
supported the event.

Riess: Quite a different feeling in the club I should think.
Johnson: It was, it was. It was a period when it was very exciting.

We had a reception this was at an annual dinner for the
women regents, who at that time were Elinor Heller and Catherine
Hearst and Dorothy Chandler. Dorothy Chandler wasn't able to
attend, but we had Mrs. Hearst and Mrs. Heller and we had a very
large crowd for that. That was limited to members.

Riess: The members would pay?

Johnson: Oh, yes, there was a charge for the annual dinner, always.

4) Professional Advancement

Riess: I'd like to know if there were any very conscious efforts to
use the club for other women's organization.

Johnson: The Faculty Wives used it for their monthly teas. A little later
the Center for Continuing Education of Women used the clubhouse,
had their headquarters here for a while.

192

Riess: But if there were professional associations of women meeting,
say, on the Berkeley campus in the summer, would there be an
immediate linkup with the club?

Johnson: Not necessarily. We would have a number of visiting women

scholars who would stay here during the summertime, or maybe
come for six months. But I don't remember that there were any
specific affairs because there was something going on for women
on the campus. You know, I just don't think that women were
involved in that way at that time.

Riess: It's interesting that over the years, the Committee for the

Professional Advancement of Women, which was a standing committee,
I think, at the club since it began, met and didn't generate
much of a report. But they did, in the late '50s and '60s. There
must have been a very active committee person at that point.

Johnson: Well, that could I mention one more thing about our fund raising
events, because this was a big event too? That was the rummage
sale that Doras Briggs was the chair for, and this was down in
one of the university's parking lots. We had a Saturday and
Sunday and we made quite a bit of money off of that, but that
was a lot of hard work, getting the tables set up and handling
it. So that was about the last of the special events that I
noted in particular.

And then going back to your professional development. The
club did have through the years a standing committee called the
Professional Development Committee. I can remember at the annual
meeting there was always a report from the Professional Development
Committee, and their report would consist of statistics and the
percentage of women faculty members to the whole faculty and
they would always go back to when the club was founded, in 1919
that percentage was dropping, you see, over the years.

I think, as I remember, originally 20 percent of the faculty
was female, and that percentage just kept falling. There was

great concern about this, but nobody could seem to do anything.

They were also concerned as to the kind of faculty committees

on which the women were asked to serve. They were never asked
to serve on the powerful committees.

It was probably around 1967, '68, when this group of faculty
women started meeting here in the club at noontime. That was
Susan Ervin-Tripp, Laura Nader, Elizabeth Scott, Herma Kay and
Babette Barton. They were at that time considering only advance
ment of the women in the academic area, but they soon expanded
their studies to staff women also on the campus. And this
coincided with the start of the women's rights movement.

193

Riess: This group of women, were they already members of the club?

Johnson: They were already members of the club.

Riess: And were they, in fact, the Professional Development Committee?

Johnson: I don't think so. I think this was an independent group that

formed, because you had these beginnings of concern about women
not being treated the same as men. And it had a great deal to
do with the eventual effort on the part of the university
authorities to try to promote women, both in the academic area
and in the staff area.

Riess: Well, it certainly seems to be the stuff of which, you would
think, many a lunchtime conversation would be composed around
here.

Johnson: They met regularly for lunch and they got a lot of publicity
in the Daily Cal and began to put on pressure.

I think in my own case personally it had some bearing on
my advancement in my own area. The university has a management
program. They also have their classification section, which
was under the Personnel Office you know, the layers and the
various titles and I had progressed to the level of Coordinator
II. Now those titles have been changed, but that was as high
as you could go, unless you could get into the management
program.

I had asked on several occasions and thought I should be
in the management program. Eventually I did get into it, but
I'm sure that that had something to do with the pressure that
was being brought to recognize women and promote them to higher
staff positions.

Riess: You were the first woman at that level?

Johnson: I was not the first woman in the management program, no. But

I do think when I finally went into it that all of this stirring
up on the campus had some bearing on it. So I was always very
grateful for what they did, even though I wasn't really personally
involved in it.

Riess: When you were a member of the club, and you were meeting with

other staff women over the years since you joined, were salaries
and women's fair share and rights and everything, were they issues
in the late '40s, in the '50s?

194

Johnson: Well no, they weren't. Women were discriminated against.
Riess: That was a very different kind [of discrimination].

Johnson: The university had its classification system and supposedly it
applied to any employee, but there were certain classifications
that you just thought of as belonging to women, and other
classifications were generally [belonging to men].

In my own area it was very difficult for a woman to become
a buyer or a senior buyer. That was the top. I was the first
woman to become a senior buyer. There were several men in that
classification, but it just wasn't considered a woman's job.
Women were secretaries and principal clerks, and it was even
very difficult to become an administrative assistant.

Riess: When you broke through that level, did you find the other women
supportive and sort of cheering you on?

Johnson: Yes, I think so. And it sort of broke some ground, because then
later on there were other women who were promoted into that
category.

You know, we were pretty naive, because we didn't think
of ourselves really as being discriminated against. That was
just the way life was.

Riess: Well, I think that might be part of the nature of the club, that

it made one feel good. I 'm wondering whether it would be possible
that this [the club] would be a place, because it was so special,
that would give people this kind of deluded feeling that they
had achieved something, even though it would only be membership
a false sense of equality, for instance, with academic women,
not that they had that much either. Here people wouldn't be
likely to bring up thorny questions like that, because here was
a safe harbor.

Johnson: Yes, I think you have a point there. For women of my geneiation,
that was the way we were raised, that there was a certain niche
that you fitted into and you didn't "rock the boat."

Riess: I think to make that breakthrough, it takes a committee of strong
women or it takes a risky mo^e.

Johnson: Oh, it does. A woman, to get ahead in her particular profession,
had to be so much better than a man. In order to make that
initial breakthrough.

195

Riess: In the original constitution, the purpose of the club was to

"promote mutual acquaintance and fellowship among women who are
officers of instruction and government of the university." In
1966, the primary purpose is "to promote and encourage educational
and professional activities of women associated with the univer
sity." That seems a real change in direction.

Do you remember the rewriting of the constitution to that extent?

Johnson: I didn't remember that specific thing, and yet, I'm not surprised
by it because again this was the period when you were just
beginning to get these stirrings of the women's movement.

5) Issues of "Aging Residents" and Hiring Managers

Riess: Another issue you dealt with as a president apparently was the
"aging residents" issue.

Johnson: I think I mentioned that they had been here for a long period

of time, that the club had a reputation, more or less, of being
an old ladies' home, because there were four people at least
who had just lived here forever, almost from the Year One.
[laughing] We really didn't do much about it until we got the
money to renovate and redo the rooms. And then the policy was
set that you could only live in the club for, oh, I don't know
what it is now, a semester or a year. You couldn't have this
long-term residence in the club. It is actually limited to I
think a year's time. It could be a possibility of an extension
for another year, but there's no real long-term residence anymore.

Riess: As president of the board, how involved were you with the parade
of managers?

Johnson: Very much so. Lucille Phipps resigned during my presidency,
and I had to interveiw for her replacement. The Berkeley
Personnel Office helped us to find candidates. It was up to
me to interview them and then to get the board to approve the
woman I chose, who was a Pat [Patricia] Barnes. She was a live
wire and contributed a great deal to all of the activities that
we were carrying on at that time, and really did a great deal
to revive the dining room.

Riess: She would have had an involvement in those wine and cheese
parties?

196

Johnson: Oh yes, yes, and the special dinners that were put on and the
menus that were chosen. But she only stayed with us about a
year. And then we had to choose another one.

Riess: Dulcie James.

Johnson: She didn't stay very long.

Riess: And then the [Gaston] Abbos.

Johnson: The Abbos, we had great expectations from them. They were from
France, but that didn't work out well either, and they didn't
stay too long.

After that I was out, was really not involved, I wasn't
on the board and I don't remember who the managers were; I was
not involved in picking them.

Riess: It seems a very major responsibility for the president. You

would sort of hope that you wouldn't have to deal with that in
your term of office.

Johnson: Oh, when I got the news that Lucille Phipps was leaving us I
was just devastated. What was I going to do? I was grateful
for the help from the Personnel Office.

6) The Ad Hoc Committee and the Joint Operations Committee,
and the Haas Gift, 1971

Johnson: So, we had all these fundraising activities, but we still couldn't
raise enough money to do anything significant. We also had a
program where we tried to get gifts, and there were a number
of gifts made to the club, but we had to face up to the fact
that we had set a goal that we probably couldn't attain.

About that time was when Chancellor Heyns formed his committee.*
Aletha Titmus was asked to be the chairman, and I was still
president of the club and was asked to serve on it, as was Betty
Neely, who at that point was vice-president but would later become
president. And I cannot remember all the men. Well, the president
of the men's club. The only one I can remember is Bob Cockrell,
but who else do you have?

Riess: Well, then you had Boris Bressler and Bob Erode.

*Ad hoc committee to study The Faculty Club and the Women's Faculty
Club, formed by invitation from Chancellor Heyns, June 1967.

197

Johnson: Oh, yes. Oh, Professor Erode. It was a great committee and

we had some really far out ideas of tearing down or moving the
Senior Men's Hall and putting some kind of a walkway between
the two clubs.

Riess: Did the men come onto that committee with the same feeling that
something needed to be done?

Johnson: They were in a worse position than we were. I think that if
they hadn't been they might not have been so interested in
this. We weren't in debt; we just didn't have enough money to
keep up. But they were in debt by a very great amount, and were
not even able to raise the interest payments on their debt.

Riess: Presumably Heyns had been aware of their difficulty also and
saw this as a great opportunity.

Johnson: To bring the two together. And at that period membership in
faculty clubs had sort of gone out of style and people on the
campus were eating at the Golden Bear on down the avenue some
place. It just wasn't the thing to do to gather at a faculty
club. Again, their membership was falling and it was mainly
those who were getting older and had been members for a number
of years.

So, it really seemed the only answer was somehow or other
to put the two clubs together and have a joint management. We
were paying for our office and management staff; they were paying
their office and management staff; we were both paying our kitchen
staffs. It was such a duplication of expenses.

Riess: It was confidential, the committee?

Johnson: Well, not really, except we didn't report on our discussions,
until we got to the point where if we were going to join the
two clubs in some manner it had to be voted on by the members
of the two clubs.

Riess: "All possibilities open to the two groups will be examined with
a view to meeting possible subsequent objections to proposed
programs from whatever quarters." It sounds like when this
committee was put together, it was with the intention of combining
the clubs. The point suggested by Heyns was

Johnson: Was to review the programs of the clubs with emphasis on future
needs and development and how best the clubs could relate to
the campus community and to each other. We were working towards

198

Johnson: unity right from the beginning, and we had no idea, the three

of us, that there would be such opposition by some of the members
of the Women's Faculty Club.

Riess: The other feeling I certainly got is that the communication level
was very low. Maybe that's because there was so little interest
in the club at all?

Johnson: You know, you'd have an annual meeting and you'd have trouble
getting a quorum, until finally it was changed that the quorum
was the number of active members present, [laughing] And maybe
you'd have twenty people!

Riess: So this ad hoc committee didn't report to the club in that three
year period.

Johnson: No, not until we were ready with our final recommendation. But
by the time we were ready for our final recommendation for the
two clubs to vote on it, some of our thoughts had gotten out
and you had this opposition building up. And it was a very well-
organized opposition.

Riess: You were no longer the president at that point.

Johnson: No, I was no longer the president. By that time I guess it was
Margaret Thal-Larsen.

That initial committee was in effect until our recommendation
was made to the full membership. They didn't really vote it
down, but there were so many strings attached to it

The men voted to accept it.

Riess: How were Bressler and Erode and Cockrell to work with?
Johnson: They were very nice to work with.

Riess: It felt like equals struggling?

Johnson: Yes. And I'm sure a great deal of that was due to the fact that
Aletha Titmus was the chairman.

Riess: Anne Low-Beer, you, Emily Huntington, and Mary Lou Norrie then

became the official joint operations committee. The ad hoc came
out from underground?

199

Johnson: I guess that was it. And I'm trying to remember, because the
membership for the men changed, and Hump [Orvin W. ] Campbell,
who was the vice-chancellor for administration, he came on that
committee and almost immediately said, "I think I can find us
some gift funds." And he found a million dollars to be divided
between the two clubs. The men's club got two thirds of it and
we got one third.

Riess: 1 received from vice-chancellor Kerley information on the terms

of the Haas gift and how it was to be used in the Women's Education
Center and the rehabilitation of the Women's Faculty Club, which
I'll just include with the oral history.*

Johnson: At one point does it tell where the funds came from, because at
one point that was supposed to be confidential, but everybody
got to know who it was.

Riess: Well, it is Strauss Associates, which is the Haas family.

Johnson: That is what really gave us the shot in the arm, when we got
that money and could go ahead with the complete renovation of
the club.

Riess: How did that money actually come to you? You said that Hump
Campbell got onto the committee.

Johnson: And he worked with the Haas family. You know, they've been very
generous to the university.

Riess: Did Hump Campbell come onto the committee and see that the

situation was really at a financial crisis point and then go
directly to Heyns and say, "You've got to do something"? What
do you think?

Johnson: I think when he came onto the committee he recognized the cause
of the crisis maybe he was put on the committee because it was
recognized if we were going to save these two clubs, something
had to be done. I really don't know, I just know when he came
on the committee and he heard us talking about how were we going
to get some money, that he made the statement, "Well, now, maybe
I can get some gift money."

Riess: How was it to serve on such a frustrating committee for three
years?

Johnson: It was frustrating. You know, we just thought we were spinning
wheels and we were never getting any place. And then, when we
finally came up with the recommendations, to have the opposition
that we met with here in this club, it was very discouraging,

*In The Bancroft Library-

200

Johnson: because that opposition started before we had any idea that there
might be another source of funds. So, you just felt the thing
was going to go under, and wasn't that going to be too bad!

There was some talk that the university would take over
this building, but what would they do with it? We hoped they
wouldn't tear it down. It was a bad time. And now I'm so happy
to see what's been done with it. Never has the club been so
affluent! From the very, very beginning it had been a struggle.

Riess: The proposal that the joint operations committee of Anne Low-
Beer, Mary Ann Johnson, Emily Huntington, and Mary Lou Norrie
came up with was put to the vote of the membership in December
of 1970. And this is when you got that unsettled outcome with
a majority saying yes, but it wasn't nearly a clear majority.
Mary Lou Norrie, in a letter to the membership, says that at
least it's getting it out into the air and now "we will really
begin to study this in a new way and a new level and will come
back to you with a new proposal."

Johnson: By that time I was beginning to withdraw from it. I was of the
group who felt we should join with the men's club. And there
was this other group Josephine Smith and Florence Minard in
particular who took a very strong role in opposing it and wrote
letters and did telephoning and so forth. And they were very
successful in getting enough people on their side.

As it turned out, I think it all worked out for the best.
But if we hadn't gotten this gift, I think we'd have gone under
unless we joined with the men. It was the gift that enabled
us to renovate the clubhouse and to put those rental rooms in
shape so that we could really rent them. And that's what now
is giving us our chief source of income. So if we hadn't been
able to do that, or hadn't joined with the men's club, I think
we would have folded. They had this women's center here for
a while, but for some reason that didn't work out. I don't know
enough about that because I wasn't involved with it. And the
dining room had closed. The people who lived here went over
to the men's club to eat. [As of January 1972 the dining room
had closed completely.]

Riess: The terms of getting that money involved the joint operation?

Johnson: It was expected with that gift that the two clubs would operate
jointly, but then it didn't work out that way.

Riess: The early opposition involved the question of whether all that
money was needed for renovation. That was one of the things
that Florence Minard tried to prove, that there had been a gross
overestimation of how much needed to be done. [see Jan. 5, 1971
report to members]

201

Johnson: That was before we got the gift, and where it seemed we were
going to have to try to raise that money ourselves if we were
going to be able to continue. And they thought our estimate
was too large. Well, as it turned out, our estimate wasn't
anywhere near enough. Our sights were to raise $60,000, and
get $120,000 from the Regents, as I remember. And we eventually
ended up spending way over $300,000.

But my recollection was that they were mainly opposed on
two grounds: that the men hadn't wanted the women in the
beginning, and that was why the Women's Faculty Club was started;
and secondly, that the men had this big debt, and we were going
to have to help them pay it off, even though the agreement we
proposed took care of that, that that debt was going to be some
thing separate, the women would never have to assume any part
of it. But it was a strong talking point that they had that
we were going to be taking on the debt that the men had , and
we were debt-free.

Riess: I think of Josephine Smith in particular as being concerned about
this?

Johnson: I think she just didn't quite trust the fact that even though

we weren't assuming any of the debt that the men had, if we joined
with them it was going to be inevitable that somehow or other
we would become responsible for paying for it.

7) The Club Operates in the Black, 1977

Riess: We're talking about a struggle that was resolved in 1976; that's
when Josephine Smith brought up more financial points, and that's
when the merger was voted down.

Johnson: But by that time we had gotten the money. The money came it
must have come in 1971 but it took quite a while before they
got going with the changes, and then it took a long, long time
for the remodeling of the club. We put in the elevator and the
rooms were changed they hadn't all had private baths and all
these bathrooms were built in. The work took a long time. And
then they had to have a special ramp for bringing handicapped
people in.

Riess: So you're saying that it took a long time before you could really
see that the operation was in the black?

202

Johnson: Before we were ready to reopen the building and start making
money! And yes, let me see, by 1977 we were operating in the
black and to the point where we could do some other things, like
reupholstering the furniture and doing over the lounge in the
library. Norma Wilier was responsible for the re-decoration
and did a magnificent job. I became chairman of the budget and
finance committee right after I retired, which probably was in
the spring of '78. And by that time they had a nice cushion,
and we were concerned then with bringing our salaries up to
standard replacing some of the equipment in the kitchen that
had been there since it was done over in '57.

Riess : I have an image of the feeling of sort of a wave having washed
over the club and then everything was all calm.

Johnson: [chuckling] Because we didn't have to pinch pennies and we
suddenly became an efficient operation.

Riess: It's so much like an identity crisis, also.

Johnson: Oh, yes, I think the image has changed, and now, you see, we

have men members, we've got men serving on the Board of Directors,
men living here. The same with the men's club: they opened
it up to women and they've had women on their board.

We've gone ahead of them because we have such a fine dining
room. And we have a lot of men, now, coming here because our
food is better than at the men's club. The whole atmosphere
in that dining room has changed. It used to be you'd go in there
and maybe there were a half a dozen people having lunch, and
now it's packed, you have to have a reservation. Oh, the
atmosphere has changed entirely!

When Philip Habib was here, before Charter Day, he came
as the Regent's Lecturer or Sather Lecturer or something the
lecture they have before the Charter Day every year he stayed
here for ten days.

Riess: Oh, that is splendid.

Johnson: Yes. And we've had any number of very prominent, international
figures staying here. Maxine Rockwell [manager] can tell you
that. So, the whole atmosphere has changed.

The only thing that we don't have anymore are the evening
affairs, because people don't want to come onto the campus in
the evening. And there's no parking around here at night to
speak of. It's very limited.

203

Johnson: We used to have dinner every so often and we'd have a Christmas
party with some kind of entertainment afterwards. We got pretty
good crowds. But people just don't come out for evening affairs.
I asked about the possibility of something in the evening, and
this was the answer I was given. And when I think about it,
I'm not so sure that I would come to an evening affair anymore,
because I live out at Rossmoor now and I just don't come into
Berkeley at night because of the security problems.

But we are having nice affairs at noontime; the Charter
Day luncheon has turned into a very, very nice affair; and every
so often there's a luncheon of some special kind, rather than
the special dinners that we used to have. The "Lunch and Learn"
that they have takes the place of something that we used to have
in the evening. That program, incidentally, was started by Doras
Briggs.

Riess: You mentioned Susan Ervin-Tripp and the women who met and used
the club as a forum. Can you remember other groups who used
the club?

Johnson: Yes. The Cowell Hospital group used to come for lunch, I don't
know, once a week or once a month, and they would be all the
people from Cowell Hospital. There would be a group of us that
would come, not on a regular basis, from University Hall. We'd
make a special point of coming up for lunch.

There are departmental luncheons here, and they're partly
business and partly just to have lunch together, and that happens
frequently. Oh, there's a woman's bridge group that meets once
a month. I think that's mainly retired members. So yes, there
are special groups that make this their meeting place. It is
a fine place to entertain guests.

Riess: Well, I think that takes it through the history that you're

most particularly identified with. I think we can stop. Thank
you. It has been very interesting.

Transcriber:
Final Typist:

John McPherson
Catherine Winter

ELEANOR VAN HORN

203a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Eleanor Van Horn

1) Departmental Secretary at the University of California 204

2) The Lunch Hour 207

3) The Planning Committee 210

4) A Close-up Look at the Rooms 215

5) Recent Managers and Presidents 216

6) Club Decor, and Club Use 218

7) The Cross-Section of Residents 220

Eleanor van Horn, Administrative Assistant
Department of Political Science

Photographed by Suzanne Eiess 3 2982

204

Eleanor Van Horn

June 17, 1982

Interviewed in her home in Berkeley

1) Departmental Secretary at the University of California

Riess: I start all these interviews by asking a little bit about the
professional history of the person I'm talking to. Are you
a University of California graduate?

Van Horn: No, no, I am not. I came to the university in 1925 as a, I
won't say "shy," young secretary but at least I was in the
beginning.

Riess: Who hired you and in what department?

Van Horn: It was Miss Vera Christie. She was a remarkable woman, a

wonderful administrator, and she gave me two or three temporary
secretarial assignments. The first was with old Professor
[Willis L.] Jepson, who was a botanist, a wonderful gentleman
who taught me much. Then I went temporarily to the chairman
of the Geology Department in old Bacon Hall, and Dean of the
College of Letters and Science, Professor [George D.] Louderback.
He had a fascinating office, surrounded by specimens of rock,
which the citizens of California kept sending to him for analysis.

Then I think about that time, the university's building
bond campaign had been undertaken in 1926. There was quite
an extended building program that was under [Robert Gordon]
Sproul, I mean Dr. Sproul; he was Mr. Sproul then. He was the
university controller and director for the project, which ran
about six to nine months. He needed a secretary for that bond
campaign project, so Miss Christie sent me to him and I worked
in California Hall in the same office with Miss [Agnes] Robb,
who was, of course, Mr. Sproul 's right-hand Girl Friday. It
was wonderful to see her functioning, really, in that office.

I had a close association with Mr. Sproul in that I took
his dictation separately for the building campaign, and learned
much from him! I remember his saying once, "Mrs. van Horn,
never presume!" I had assumed something or other and he asked why

205

Van Horn:

Riess:

Van Horn:

Riess:

Van Horn:

Riess:
Van Horn:

a certain action hadn't taken place. I explained my part in
it. Then he said, in that commanding voice of his, "Never
presume," which I've never forgotten. [chuckles]

Was that a little bit of his wish always to be consulted about
everything?

No, just that I had not made every effort to determine a certain
piece of information. I had assumed something, when I should
have investigated a little further. He was absolutely right,
which was a very valuable lesson to learn from someone of his
calibre. He was really marvelous.

The controller's office was a very good office. The girls
were conscientious, serious.

With business school training?
you say the secretaries had?

What kind of training would

I would say probably not, as I recall. I think the girls with
whom I was associated (because my desk was there), I would say
that they were not university-trained, as I was not. I went
to a very good business school, the Munson School for Private
Secretaries. Did you ever hear of it, in San Francisco?

Munson? No.

It was an excellent school then, I think the best there was.
And I had had a little post-graduate work after high school
at Polytechnic High School in San Francisco. But I had never,
for family reasons, I had never attended the university. After
I came here, I had the feeling, "This is where I want to be."
And so I started auditing courses and took some University
Extension work.

But to go back to the controller's office this really
is an interesting part <~f a lower level personnel development ;
it also shows one can well believe in miracles. I've had many
of them happen! While I was associated with Mr. Sproul (as
I say, he was then Mr. Sproul), he had a call one day from
Professor [David Prescott] Barrows, the Chairman of the Political
Science Department, whom we always called General Barrows because
he did have a military title. Are you familiar with his name
at all?

Riess:

Yes.

206

Van Horn: I was Professor Barrow's secretary (as well as secretary of

the department) until he retired. But the evolution of it was
that one day he phoned Mr. Sproul saying that his secretary
was ill and could Mr. Sproul spare anyone to help him for a
couple of weeks. So I was assigned to do this and went to the
Political Science Department office, which was on the second
floor of beautiful South Hall. And I just fell in love with
it.

He was a perfectly charming man, you know, very handsome.
Did you ever see him?

Riess: I've seen pictures of him.

Van Horn: Oh, but never met him. Such a commanding presence, so handsome,
wonderful voice, and with the loveliest, most gracious manners.

I was there for two weeks, and at that time I thought,
"Oh how I would love to be in this department." And in a few
months time, no, in a year's time because after the building
campaign had been concluded I was asked to continue in the
Controller's Office in a year's time, the position in Political
Science became vacant and it was offered to me. So, miracle
number 1 .

Riess: The career of a secretary in 1926 how high did you expect that
you would be able to go in your wildest imaginings?

Van Horn: I didn't think very much about it. I have never been "ambitious"
or "career-minded," somehow or other. I was so completely
nourished by being in the academic environment that it made
no difference, if I continued to grow and develop, as I hoped
I would. I learned so much from these minds with which I was
constantly associated.

Riess: Talking about women on the campus, the university must have

taken advantage of the feeling you expressed that the atmosphere
here was so enriching as to make the service something you would
have done practically voluntarily.

Van Horn: Yes. Actually, Mrs. Riess, although I did not have formal

university training, I had an excellent education. My basic
education was in San Francisco, though I had earlier attended
Miss Head's School in Berkeley after French Kindergarten, and
then the McKinley School. Then I attended Miss Hamlin's private
school and ultimately went to Lowell High School, which was
the academic high school in those days. I was ready for more
learning.

207

Riess: I'm talking about a tradition of under-pay at the university
that is underwritten by the fact that the university is such
a wonderful place that people willingly accept what they can
get.

Van Horn: You are stating it exactly correctly at the time, because I
was really an efficient secretary. Some of my friends said,
"You know, you really could earn more if you were in business."
And it made no appeal to me. I said I would prefer to sacrifice
any additional income for being in this environment. I think
there were plenty of girls who felt the same way. Some of my
associates did, not all of them.

Riess: When you came to work at the university, where did you live?

Van Horn: I lived in Oakland at first and then moved to Berkeley. I was
married at the time. My husband and I were divorced in 1932.
I had originally lived in Berkeley, where I was born, but later
in San Francisco. I had had a business background; I had worked
for the Young Women's Christian Association Pacific Coast Head
quarters, had a fine experience there. We had an excellent
office manager, Miss [Elizabeth] Ristine, and I learned very
much from her. And then I worked as secretary to the manager
of the Methodist Book Concern, Mr. Howard M. Boys, an admirable
man who taught me much, too. But I had several positions with
business firms, so I had a business point of view. I had a
variety of experiences, and this revealed different modus
operandi, really. It let me know how impersonal and tough a
business environment could be.

2) The Lunch Hour

Riess: When you first were on the campus in 1925, the Women's Faculty
Club did huve their wonderful building. Do you remember ever
noticing it or giving it a thought?

Van Horn: Oh, yes, but let me make this observation. At that time, it

was reserved to faculty. There were women faculty, of course.

Riess: Oh, I know. But they did let some very high-level staff join.

Van Horn: Well, I don't recall when they started doing that, but I never
gave it a thought, except being invited to have lunch there
occasionally with members.

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Van Horn: I was invited to become a member in 1952, I believe. At that
time, I was not drawn in to any activity of the club. When
I joined I would simply go for lunch, but I wasn't drawn in
in any way. I didn't have any particular ongoing interest.

I was so involved in the operations of the department.
The work became increasingly heavier, but very welcome, with
responsibility for increased staff, as well as functioning as
the assistant to the chairman. Then much later we began to
prepare for conversion to the quarter system scheduled for
1966-67. I mean, I was responsible for all of the paper work
and everything incidental for that process. I was just so
involved that I didn't pay any attention to the functioning
of the club.

Riess: You would certainly have taken your hour lunch and been able
to shed those responsibilities for an hour, wouldn't you?

Van Horn: Oh, I would go there at times for lunch, oh yes!

Riess: Your associates there, were there other departmental secretaries,
and were they inclined to talk about the same kinds of burdens?

Van Horn: Well, my campus associates, one who had very much the same feeling
that I did was Hazel Niehaus. We have remained friends. We
see each other occasionally and go to the club for lunch always.
She had a wonderful experience, too. She was the university
printer's right hand, Mr. Joseph Flynn. She was a girl without
formal education, I mean university education. She had attended
business college, but she grew in her position and was a wonderful
administrative assistant who had wide contacts. Very social,
very nice. She and I would sometimes have lunch. But we didn't
spend the time doing post-mortems on all of our problems. We
would share them, but we talked about other things. For instance,
we both belonged to the St. Moritz Ice Skating Club [of Berkeley]
and we'd talk about the politics of the ice rink. We participated
in the program to raise money for the ice rank, Iceland; we
bought shares in it; we would go every week to ic^. skate, and
that would be one subject of discourse. But we didn't dwell
on the functioning of the Women's Faculty Club or how it was
organized or how it operated.

Riess: I think there would be so much you could learn from the network
of the secretaries at the university and the administrators.
So if you wouldn't have that conversation in the club where
you met, where would you?

209

Van Horn: Well, maybe when we had a coffee break we would go over to the
Co-op. You know, the student Co-op used to be in Stephen's
Hall, then called the Union. They had a very nice counter,
and we'd traipse over about 3:00 or 3:30, as we would stagger
our time. We needed that cup of coffee for fifteen minutes
[chuckles]! But I didn't really know any of the faculty who
were members of the Women's Faculty Club at that time, except
Professor Emily Huntington.

Riess: Why did you know her particularly?

Van Horn: Because I knew her when she was a high school student at Miss
Hamlin's School in San Francisco. I thought about this when
I attended the memorial service for her. She was just a bright-
eyed, very attractive, outgoing, high-spirited young woman,
when I was just a little boarding school girl of ten. To see
her as she emerged from that bright-eyed girl whom I've never
forgotten made just a lovely link. And she remembered me; she
would always speak [to me] when we met on the campus. But I
don't think I ever had lunch with her.

Riess: When you were lunching there in the '50s, who were some of the,
to your mind, more interesting, more dynamic women who would
be at the club.

Van Horn: Well, of course, that was after Dean [Lucy] Stebbins. Dean
[Mary B.] Davidson, Professor Barbara Nachtrieb of the Law
School, Martha Chickering in Social Welfare, Emily Noble in
Economics. There was someone in Decorative Arts; I didn't know
Professor [Hope] Gladding at that time. I'd have to think a
little bit more about it.

Riess: Did you go to the parties and involve yourself in that way?

Van Horn: No, no. I really did not become involved that socially until
after I retired. It wasn't that I wouldn't have, but the
occasions didn't seem to arise. Also, I didn't go to the club
as often as I might have simply because it became a matter of
timing. I'd have a late lunch anyhow I usually went to lunch
about 1:00 p.m. And the club stopped serving at about 1:00
then now it's 1:30. Come to think about it, that's probably
one reason why I didn't go more often. And I did have other,
outside interests.

It just seemed to work out better for the office, and I
got so that I much preferred the late lunch hour. Something
was usually going on at noon, and it seemed an undesirable time
for me to be away. The chairman might be there and he wouldn't
always be going off promptly for lunch. It just worked out.

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Van Horn: As I say, I enjoyed the club very much, it was a very gracious
spot, it was an oasis in the middle of a maybe exacting day.
But all of this I relished no matter what the situation was.

Riess: Incidentally, was the Men's Faculty Club used by your department
members?

Van Horn: It was not used heavily by the members of our department, as
I recall. As my area of awareness kept expanding, I became
conscious of the fact that not all of the faculty belonged
I expected all of them would be members, and then I found that
a number of them were not. I soon came to know the ones who
were habitue's, and those who went occasionally, and those who
only went when they were driven, those who had to go to a meeting
that was a "command performance." And then, maybe, social,
or if there was some special occasion.

Some faculty were of a less social temperament, some felt
that the dues weren't worth it to them, or they just didn't
care for the food there. Some went over to play cards, play
. poker or something, regularly there would be a group from other
departments. And without thinking about it, I came to know,
"Oh, well, Professor So-and-So; if you want him he'll probably
be at the club playing cards." That sort of thing emerged.
But I would say, offhand that at that time, the thirties and
forties, probably not more than half the department faculty
were club members. It may have changed later, but that's
my recollection.

Riess: I would have assumed that all faculty women would have joined
the Women's Faculty Club. But on the contrary

Van Horn: Well, the academic animal depending on his (or her) field,
discipline is more apt to be less social.

3) The Planning Committee

Van Horn: As I say, it's only since I've retired that I've become really
involved in the club. And that was through an invitation to
become a member of a committee.

Riess: What committee was that?

Van Horn: I was invited to join I guess what you would call the planning
committee, with Norma Wilier. She was the "chairman," and I,
and a third member, Lea Miller I believe, who did not serve

211

Van Horn:

Riess:
Van Horn:
Riess:
Van Horn:

Riess:
Van Horn:

very long because she suffered a stroke. As I recall, she had
an expertise in decorative arts. And this was a very interesting
and pleasant assignment. I enjoyed it very much. We became
involved in the redecoration of the club. It was carrying on
with what Peg Uridge, the president, had tried to do.

Peg Uridge "s presidency was from 1973-1978.

Oh, yes; I knew her personally. She was an old friend.

You're talking about after Peg Uridge?

As a matter of fact, while Peg was president. While she was
there, I spent a little more time and I'd have more conversation
with her when I'd have lunch with her, and I became more
interested in what she was trying to do, bless her dear heart.
Every now and then she'd ask me to go with her to pick out some
material maybe to reupholster a chair or something like that.
So I began that way. I'd go with her to a decorator's shop
in Alameda and we'd look over stuff and make a decision; and
then we might go to another shop to look further.

I forget exactly when the planning committee became a
committee as such I think it was under Katherine Williams
because Peg subsequently became ill. But she was magnificent
through all that reconstruction of the cluS, all that heavy
work. The fortitude that woman had!

And so, this was after the merger issue?

Yes. I listened to the arguments. I remember one dinner meeting,
at which we had to vote. That was under President Margaret
Thal-Larsen, who was a friend of mine. Margaret and I were
really good friends; she had been a graduate student in the
Political Science Department. She had a Ph.D. degree and was
one of our few women doctoral candidates. A brilliant girl,
really a darling, brilliant girl.

I knew that this issue, the merger, was going to get
squeakier and I really didn't feel that I grasped all the
implications of it. I mean, I listened to the arguments and,
of course, I knew Josephine Smith, who was very persuasive in
her point of view. She was a member of the St. Moritz Ice
Skating Club to which I belonged and I had known her since she
was assistant to the university budget officer (comptroller).
I had to have many telephone exchanges with her over budgetary
matters. But she and I were friends and always got along.

212

Van Horn: I finally did vote for the merger, feeling not completely

persuaded. But I felt that it was going to happen and that
we'd better be forward-looking. But subsequently the arguments
were very persuasive that we were going to be carrying the Men's
Faculty Club debts.

Riess: But you say that subsequently you came to change your mind.

Van Horn: I may have changed, but there was no opportunity for changing

a vote. I began to doubt my, shall I say "wisdom," and I think
that I came to agree that it probably was the right decision
[not to merge] .

I did pay attention to the observation of one Men's Faculty
Club member who admitted that the management of the men's club
was just abyssmal. I think he was really sympathetic, that
it wouldn't be rational to merge. And that was good objectivity
to pay attention to.

Riess: The people who felt most strongly included some of the very
oldest members who had a deep attachment to the building and
its contents.

Van Horn: Oh, I think so. And very easy to understand. The two organisms
really just are so different. Think of the men who really
appreciate the amenities of the Women's Faculty Club.

I've had many meals in the Men's Faculty Club. It is a
charming place, it has a great deal of ambience. But when I
became involved in the redecoration and the refreshment of the
Women's Faculty Club there are some very interesting observations
on that process that I could make if you wanted them I realized
that the feminine hand was so absent in terms of niceties that
are reasonable to expect in a men's club. Everything doesn't
have to be "spit and polish," of course, but there was so much
neglect that it began to be really it began not to be so
attractive. Some things would be so battered and not cared
for and stained a certain amount of this contributes to "charm,"
of course, and it's easy to understand.

Heaven's, look at some of the colleges at Oxford University,
where I visited once. One of our department visitors one year
was the Rector of All Souls College (as I recall) and he invited
me to call when I went to visit Oxford. He entertained me for
tea in his "digs" and took me to see the dining room of the
college, rather "beaten up" the way you might expect it to be,
you know. Somehow or other you could accept it; you wouldn't
want it to be pristine. But there's a balance between a sort

213

Van Horn:

Riess:

Van Horn:

Riess:

Van Horn:

of indifference to, well, stained upholstery; how far is that
to go? The piano stained by glasses being set upon it. How
far do you let that go? Is that for atmosphere?

The point I am trying to make is that there are some men
to whom this really gets through. And I think they prefer to
have a polished table instead of a scarred one.

And of course the comment's been made that the food has
improved so much in the Women's Faculty Club over The Faculty
Club (men's). A number of the men have claimed that the place
to go for good food is to the Women's Faculty Club.

Tell me about the planning and redecorating.
Norma Wilier.

You worked with

She was the key to it, along with the president, of course.
It was Norma who redesigned the lounge.

Now, was this for the club, or was this in her professional
capacity?

Oh no, this was for the club. She did this on her own time.
I mean, this was her contribution as a member of the club. I
remember that she painted drew and painted in color a redesign
layout of the lounge. Do you remember it the way it used to
be?

Riess: No.

Van Horn: Well, it looked very different. We had drapes, curtains, long,
sort of off-white curtains which I never felt completely happy
with. But I wouldn't have said so because Peg Uridge was
responsible for their being there, and I would never have wanted
her to feel hurt. She may have felt a little uncomfortable
about them because a member of the club had volunteered to make
them. It was a loving thing to do and they really looked nice.
But I think some members of the club felt, "Really, can't we
do better?" And ultimately the curtains were eliminated and
the Riviera blinds were installed we didn't have those then.

The beautiful big Oriental rug was over on the south side
of the lounge. And the long library table that's used whenever
we have parties you know, for serving was way over closer
to the fireplace. A long couch faced the fireplace, against
the table, and the table, with lamps, had magazines strewn over
it. The piano was in the corner on the north side of the room,
near Dean Davidson's picture. All the other pieces were in

214

Van Horn: different spots: that red Chinese cabinet that's on the east
wall stood against the west wall; a few other pieces were
completely differently placed. The furniture was not as it appears
now, because all of those pieces were reupholstered.

Norma drew all of this in a new arrangement and had ideas
about which pieces to recover and certain effects or certain
colors or designs. The refreshments that we carried on having
new lampshades made, shifting pictures, etcetera, well, those
were the basic items.

Riess: Were the walls white before?

Van Horn: Yes, the coloring was the same, no change in the walls. It
was a very attractive graphic exhibit which Norma presented.
And I remember when the Board of Directors was to vote on the
design or approve it, she wasn't able to attend the meeting,
so she asked me if I would go in her place and present it. I
was surprised, really, and it was very pleasing, how readily
everybody reacted to the design and the suggested upholstery
samples. The board was completely in favor of it right away.
So this meant that we could proceed to the materials, decide
on the designs. And this was lots of fun.

I did go to the city with Norma on occasion. Because Norma
as an architect had access to decorators' studios, we went to
some of the sources for furnishings and materials places, which
I'd never seen. You know, you have to have an entree. It was
really a great pleasure. And to see Norma functioning, too!
So we would all agree, the three of us; and sometimes just she
and I might agree upon a certain pattern or a certain material.

Riess: Did you have to have them approved at all?

Van Horn: I don't think so, in every case. They trusted her taste. Maybe
I should amend that by saying, undoubtedly yes, she must, yes,
of course, she checked with the president, she checked with
Katherine, and with the manager, Maxine Rockwell.

Riess: There was money to do that refurnishing then, I take it?

Van Horn: Well, money became successively available. We could do certain
things up to a point and the Board of Directors would commit
a certain amount of money. And then there would be another
wave of acquisition and more funds. This would be transmitted
to Norma, and she rode herd on the budget outlays.

215

Van Horn: As soon as all this was accomplished and all the shif tings were
made I'm sure there were some, well, not disagreements but
not everyone saw eye to eye where we might place a particular
piece, an object d'art; I mean that goes on all the time. I
participated in the arrangement of certain pieces, the Chinese
carvings for instance; I determined where they might be placed,
and my suggestions were accepted.

Riess: When this was all finished, was there any kind of dedication
of the new room?

Van Horn: There was a reception, as I recall.

4) A Close-up Look at the Rooms

Van Horn: And then, after that, we began to work on all the individual
rooms, because they needed so much attention. We made an
inventory of all the rooms. You know, there are twenty-five
rooms for rent. There are twenty-six, but one of them is
occupied by Mrs. [Kay] McCrodden who's the night resident
manager.

Three years ago, when I had been evicted from my rented
flat [which had been sold] , and I moved to the club for two
months, as a member of the committee then I had a wonderful
opportunity to become intimately acquainted with all of these
rooms .

I couldn't be sure of occupying a room continuously. While
I was there I moved eight times. The rooms were all committed
to others and this shows the extent of the activity. There
are so many visitors from abroad or from other places, cities
or institutions, in this country, and one or two who return
every year. One man even kept his room all of the time. He'd
be away for months, leaving some of his things in one of the
closets. I was able to have his room twice when he was away,
and when he returned I would have to lug all my clothes and
other possessions to another room.

Riess: So they get a double income from that room?

Van Horn: I think not. They have an agreement on its use. So it was
seven different rooms, though I moved eight times because I
could go back to the same room. It became a joke; we just
laughed about it. Sometimes one of the maids helped me shift
all my things, up or down. How much I appreciated the elevator!

216

Van Horn: But this gave me an opportunity to see the condition of these
rooms so I was able to make more refined reports on what was
needed. I really was appalled at the condition of some of the
rooms. There were several rooms that began to look so sad.
The shades, for instance, would be torn. I remember in a
particular room one chair even had a broken leg, and the
occupant, a man, was sitting on that chair with three legs,
working at the desk. There were spots on the carpets and stains
and scratches on the furniture! I was able to find a very good
furniture man who could do refinishing, and I persuaded him
to be willing to take on the club. I arranged also for a man
who would take the contract for making new drapes and blinds
for all of the rooms. So if you were to go into the rooms now,
it's just as though they had gone through a metamorphosis.

Riess: If things were going as well as they were in the club financially
with some money being available, those repairs must have been
on somebody's agenda. You're not suggesting that you brought
it to their attention that things had come to this state of
affairs.

Van Horn: Oh, no! They knew it. But I could help particularize it at
times. We made a card record of each room: its condition,
what it needed. We made a tour. I'd go with Katherine or else
with Norma and on occasion the three of us were together.

Ultimately, what I loved was being responsible for hanging
some of the pictures. I love to hang pictures.'

Riess: Were the pictures all there?

Van Horn: No, we had to buy many of them. At least Norma did; I never

bought any. She ordered and had delivered a number of pictures,
and then sometimes we'd consult or maybe I'd make a few decisions
or I'd refer to Katherine or Maxine, or we decided to reverse
a decision. And I can't tell you what fun it was. We'd try
this picture, "No, it wasn't compatible with this room, no.
It'll be better in 208." There are two large rooms with twin
beds, 208 and 308, really very sweet.

5) Recent Managers and Presidents

Van Horn: Katherine, you know, has a background in interior decorating.
I believe that maybe her family, or her husband had been an
interior decorator. She's done a great deal for the club. And
Maxine Rockwell has had experience, too. She's a very interesting
woman. She was an undergraduate and graduate student in Political

217

Van Horn: Science, and has a master's degree in international relations.
I knew her as a graduate student. And when she turned up at
the club I was just delighted! She remembered me and I
remembered her. We're very friendly and spend time chatting
when we have the opportunity. I'm under the impression that
she first came maybe part-time, not full-time, but I'm not at
all certain about this. But she's an excellent manager. And
she was very skillful at managing during the upheaval.

That was really a hard time for the staff when all the
renovations were made; the sprinkler system was put in, the
elevator had to be installed to meet local code requirements.
For three stories you have to have an elevator now.

Riess: I think that the manager before Maxine was Mrs. Curtis.

Van Horn: Mrs. Curtis, yes. And then she was either ill or had an accident
as I recall. Then there was another manager. But the whole
physical arrangement downstairs in the basement was just so
different. They. didn't really have an efficient set-up
physically. Dear Peg could cope with any situation; whether
it was a mass of unorganized material whirling around her made
no difference. She was above it all. She was just marvelous.
She had had a very important position in the University Library.

I remember visiting her once or twice in her office, quite
a large one. [Excitedly] It was the most jam-packed of any
office I ever saw! Records and papers, not so many books but
papers jammed everywhere. It was almost as if she were
surrounded by a bank of papers. And her desk was overflowing.
Her thesis was that you didn't waste time putting things back
that you were going to use. If a drawer would be open, leave
it open, because you're going to use it shortly. Don't put
that away, you're going to use it pretty soon! She just thought
it was wasted energy to put everything back.

Riess: Now how did she have time to be the president of the club;
Van Horn: Well, I think it was after she retired.
Riess: And that's the case for Katherine Williams?

Van Horn: Oh, definitely. She was assistant registrar, you know, on the
campus. That's how I knew her. We would do business, hot
business on the phone, over a lot of things, especially the
General Catalogue. But then, we always had a very good relation
ship. She could be hard-hitting; she might "come down" on you
if there was something you couldn't deliver on. But she was
really great .

218

6) Club Decor, and Club Use

Van Horn: I think that the club is just so fortunate to have these two

women who work so well together. Even now I keep noticing slowly
little, I won't say refinements, but little improvements or
changes here and there.

Riess: Like what?

Van Horn: For instance, on the dining room tables we used to have milk-
glass vases. Some people thought they were charming, others
thought them less than charming. I think it was probably
Katharine who brought in the little ceramic dishes with those
cute little dried flower arrangements in them. Now those have
been removed and I noticed recently that each pot is tastefully
planted with little ferns.

Riess: Was the library redone with your help?

Van Horn: No. Norma was certainly responsible for all of that redesigning.
The Board of Directors decided to make it a memorial to Mrs.
Uridge. So Norma was completely responsible for all of the
designing of it. She's done a lot of work for the club. And
have you noticed the little plaque which is above the door?

Riess: I haven't, I regret to say.

Van Horn: It says that the library is a memorial to Margaret W. Uridge.

It's very tasteful. Previously the library had Dean Stebbins's
picture hanging over the desk. That is a lovely Chinese desk
by the way. Well, it was decided to remove the picture since
the room is now a memorial to Margaret. The portrait was hung
in the dining room, but now it's been shifted to the hall, the
foyer; it looks handsome there. Dean Stebbins was a lovely,
lovely woman. [N.B. The portrait has now been moved to the
lounge, and hangs on the wall in place of Dean Davidson's portrait
which has gone elsewhere as it was a loan, I understand. E.vH.]

Riess: Have you done any other committee work with the club?

Van Horn: No, no, I haven't. I think the committee rather dwindled away.
But every now and then Katherine and I have a conversation about
changing something or doing something. As a matter of fact,
I suggested moving Dean Stebbins's portrait to the foyer.

Riess: It's interesting that you bring up Dean Stebbins's portrait.
I think that there still is a lot of difficulty in the club
in just doing things, that there are a lot of people who still
think, "Oh, what's it doing there?"

219

Van Horn: Oh, yes. This is bound to be, this is bound to be.
Riess: You think it's bound to be?

Van Horn: Oh, yes. Peoples' tastes are so different what looks just

right looks perfectly awful to someone else. Taste is a very
delicate subject to ponder.

Riess: Yes, but it's also a matter of change.

Van Horn: Exactly. And it's very easy to appreciate this, to understand
it. Some people like change for the sake of change, regardless
of what it does to any effect or of any disturbance. Sensitive
eyes that have a wide angle will feel that moving one part
as in a painting with an artist if you change one little part
of it, it affects the whole, and then this becomes a chain
reaction and you can't stop. I think there are people who,
maybe unconsciously, are a little apprehensive of a certain
change, because that means that something else is going to have
to pay the price. It's very easy to be sympathetic one's
temperament, one's conditioning is involved. Who knows?

I had a picture framed at Maxwell Gallery years ago it
happened to be this one here on my wall, a Breugel. I remember
the young woman who helped me decide on the framing of it said,
"You know, it's almost impossible to discuss taste."

I'm sure that changes in the club can't help but bother
some, not necessarily the, as they say, "older" members. There
seem to be more younger women in the club now. And are you
aware of the fact that women in the community now can be invited
to become members if they have some association with the univer
sity, perhaps as a graduate of the university, but also have
some "meaningful" experience of some significance in the
community? It was recently announced

Riess: Under Katherine Williams?

Van Horn: Yes, yes, very recently, under Katherine. I personally know
of one such woman who was recently invited to become a member
of the club who had graduated from the school of librarianship
now called the School of Library and Information Studies. If
a woman has had some meaningful or significant experience,
although it may be with another organization or institution
or maybe in some .professional sense for a certain period, at
least three years I don't know how they arrived at three
years she is eligible for consideration for membership.

220

Riess: When Norma and the committee were planning a different sort

of layout for the living room, did you have in mind space for
lectures and things like that?

Van Horn: I think it was just designed to give a little more uplift to

the lounge, just for the club and the members per se. I don't
recall that our committee thought about it being used for larger
groups. At that time, the lounge was not used so frequently
for luncheon parties. And now you never know if there's going
to be a luncheon scheduled there. This is part of a money
raising policy.

Riess: To let it be used?

Van Horn: Yes. And not only by campus groups, Mrs. Riess, but by outside
unrelated groups. I know there is a so-called History Club,
not one of the University Section clubs, which holds its session
there. And I have acquaintances who will show up every now
and then in the club at an afternoon card party. The groups
do not have an obvious relationship to the campus, but maybe
it's more so than I appreciate. Think of the weddings which
have been held there! Making the club available for income
purposes is a smart idea. But it probably has its limitations,
because, as I understand from Maxine, sometimes the premises
are not always treated with the greatest respect. This could
become a problem.

7) The Cross-Section of Residents

Riess: Well, that really brings us very much up to the present. Are
there any other people or stories or funny things about the
club that you ought to tell me?

Van Horn: Well, perhaps ar. interesting little observation that I

experienced while I was staying at the club for those two months.
As you may know, there is always a continental breakfast avail
able that is served between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. in the private
dining room. And you know its two tables put together are quite
large, seating something like fourteen people. I would go down
for breakfast. There might be just a trickle of guests, or
maybe the table would be full, with quite a variety of guests.

While 1 was there, there were quite a number of men as
guests in the club, for short periods of time, maybe a week,
or a month, or even longer. And the cross-section was really
fascinating. There was one, an engineer from India, a very

221

Van Horn: nice gentleman. Maybe I shouldn't observe this, but I remember
at the time I felt, "I don't want to go to breakfast while Mr.
So-and-So is there." I shouldn't have felt this way, but he
made so much noise with his coffee, he slurped his coffee so,
that I found it unpleasant and I didn't want to sit by him
as might be necessary. But I thought, "What a trivial attitude
to have." And I thought, "How often do these little things
disturb people and condition their social response." It was
because it was so intimate, you know. So I thought, "Well,
you can at least rise above the irritation; it's just So-and-So
slurping his coffee."

And then we had a very interesting Russian, Ajaz Adil Ogly
Efendiev. He was a professor of chemical engineering from Baku
in Azerbijan that we call "Azer-by- j an . " But he informed me,
"Mrs. van Horn, it is Azerbijan. " He was a young man, black-
haired, big, overweight, really fat, rather what we would say
a little overbearing in manner, but only because it was his
exuberance, I think. He spoke English pretty well, with a
very obvious heavy accent. We had met at breakfast and then
we had some conversation a little later.

There is a lounge upstairs on the second floor with a
television in it. Every morning after breakfast some of the
men would go in to catch the news. I would sometimes go in
to see what was happening as I didn't have a daily paper then.
Pretty soon I noticed that the door would be closed and I would
hear the men laughing. I opened the door 6nce to go in, but
there were so many of them I thought, "Well, there aren't enough
chairs and somebody will have to give me his seat," so I excused
myself.

Then another time it seemed to be vacant so I thought I'd
pop in before anybody came. And in came Mr. Efendiev! He came
bounding in hope this never gets back to him but he bounded
in, turned the station on the TV without asking, went over to
the window and threw it open, sat down, and lit a cigar. You
know, this really annoyed me. I can't bear cigar smoke; it
almost makes me sick. But I thought, "Never mind, now." Then
he engaged me in conversation, and after a while I couldn't
stand the smoke so I finally left.*

*At this point the interviewer was out of tape, but Mrs. van
Horn went on to describe the guests at the Women's Faculty
Club. At our request, she later wrote the material out,
and we include it following.

222

Van Horn: Another time we met and he started to talk to me a bit. He
understood there was some way he could find help with his
English. There is an organization on campus for this purpose.
Maybe you have heard of it: English In Action, associated with
the University Y.W.C.A. On request, volunteers are available
to meet with foreign visitors (usually scholars) on a one-to-one
basis, on a more or less fixed schedule, for one hour a week.

As I am a member of this group, I volunteered to meet with
Mr. Efendiev, after he had registered with the English In Action
chairman chairwoman at the Y House. After he was "accepted"
as a conversation partner, we met once a week in the morning
at the Women's Faculty Club since we were both residents not
at Y House where meetings are usually held.

Our sessions were most interesting and stimulating, to
me, certainly. He asked many questions about our governmental
institutions, especially local, about our election process,
tax system, etcetera, and we talked also about music, which
we both agreed was the most universal form of communication.
He brought me two classical recordings by Russian symphony
orchestras, a Rimski-Korsakov and a Chopin.

He inquired a bit about myself, and showed considerable
interest in my new home which, after two months of searching,
finally materialized.- I thought that it would be kind to invite
him to see it. So one afternoon he came for tea, bringing
another Russian record, Glasunow. He took off his coat, hung
it carefully over the back of a chair, then took a quick tour
of the flat, pronouncing it very attractive, even though I was
scarcely settled. After serving him much coffee and cake, I
played his record.

He then asked to see my record collection, pronouncing
it "very good." It is so small, I had to laugh. Maybe he was
just being polite. I happened to turn up a record of popular
music: Hary Owens' Royal Hawaiian Band, and asked Mr. Efendiev
if he was familiar with this kind of music. He was not, so I
put it on the hi fi. It is charmingly lyrical in that special
Hawaiian way, if you know it.

Suddenly Mr. Efendiev asked, "Mrs. van Horn, do you dance?"
When I replied affirmatively, he -raid, "Let us tango." So,
a little tentatively, I agreed, not knowing how much I might
remember of tango steps. We started out dancing on the living
room rug, but his tango turned out to be just a "one-step" or
"two-step." To my surprise, he was a wonderful dancer, very
light on his feet as many fat men are said to be.

223

Van Horn: It was a delightful moment. Then he put on his coat, kissed

my hand, saying, "Mrs. van Horn, I respect you very much. You
are the most intelligent woman I have met" which may not say
much for his breadth of experience! As he is a member of
the Communist Party (we talked of this a bit earlier) , I wondered
lightly what some conservative souls might have thought of such
an episode! He gave me his address in Baku, and we have
exchanged Christmas cards ever since. He was warmly expressive
of the service and attention that he received at the Women's
Faculty Club, and wrote also to Mrs. Rockwell and the "lovely
ladies" of the club staff.

Other interesting little incidents took place at the club
during my stay. An Australian professor of music, Manfred Clynes,
would at times play the piano in the club lounge, really
practising. As he was a strong player, I think that the sound
was a little too much at times for some of the residents. He
had given to me two cassette tapes of his recordings, Bach's
Goldberg Variations and a Beethoven Sonata. Thinking that it
would be nice to hear them, I arranged for them to be played
one evening in the lounge, having borrowed a tape player from
a visiting young Englishman staying in the club. The "concert"
was attended by several guests, including Mr. Efendiev and a
particularly interesting, well informed, and delightful professor
of canon law from London University, Charles Duggan, who comes
to the university each year for several months to carry on his
research at Boalt Hall. He is often accompanied by his beautiful
wife, who is also a professor. I don't. recall her field
precisely but think that it is rhetoric or literature.

Other foreign guests during my stay included visitors from
Germany, Australia, India, Turkey, in addition to several
faculty members from other, United States universities. A pretty
young woman from India, a Ph.D. in Public Health, wore colorful
saris, which carried an odor of camphor or such slightly dis
tracting if you sat by her at breakfast! She developed some
transportation problems with which I was able to help her, so
we had a very nice friendly exchange later. She called upon
me in my room to say goodbye, bringing a little gift of Indian
handcraf t.

I might make just one more interesting comment on life
in the club. It pertains to the use of the two kitchens on
the second and third floors. These are nicely equipped kitchens,
with refrigerators and with printed instructions posted on
the walls. I was aware that the kitchens were well used. In
fact, I would often heat some milk for a late-night glass before
I went to bed. The refrigerator would be packed tightly to

224

Van Horn: the edges with food and containers. My carton of milk was always
untouched. At times I smelled various dishes cooking, some
odors not exactly recognizable. I am sure that some of our
guests must have had to make ends meet at times by managing
their own meals, or else American food left much to be desired
and the need for a native dish was compelling. The provision
of these facilities by the club must be greatly appreciated
by all.

Transcriber: John McPherson
Final Typist: Catherine Winter

KATHERINE VAN VALER WILLIAMS

224a

TABLE OF CONTENTS Katharine Van Valer Williams

1) A Career in University Administration 225

2) The Women's Faculty Club, 1971-1977 226

3) Presidency, 1978, and Refurnishing the Rooms 229

4) An Active, Interested Board 232

5) Committee Support 234

6) Management 237

7) The Kitchen 240

8) The Gardens 243

9) Club Finances 247
10) Future Plans 249

THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB
SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1983

Katharine Van Valer Williams, Assistant Registrar,
University Registrar's Office, and President of The
Women's Faculty Club. Standing right: Willa Baum,
Division Head, Regional Oral History Office.

Presentation of individual oral histories. Seated,
facing camera, left to right: Margaret Murdock,
Josephine Miles, Marian Diamond, Elizabeth Scott.
Standing, left to right: Bonnie Wade, Evelyn Nichols,
Suzanne Riess, Katherine V. Williams. Seated, backs to
camera: Gudveig Gordon-Britland, Eleanor Van Horn,
Mary Ann Johnson, Agnes Robb.

225

Katharine Van Valer Williaias

July 21, 1982

Interviewed in the Library of the Women's Faculty Club

1) A Career in University Administration

Riess: What is your background at this university?

Williams: I came in 1956 to the university simply because I was tired of
volunteering my time and all that. I thought it would be
interesting to do work with animals. Well, that's one way to
look at it, because I got involved in the Registrar's Office
[chuckles] , as a typist clerk.

Certain promotions followed, and I was involved in space
assignment, which was very new on campus, and I worked closely
with the Building and Campus Development Committee, which later
fell into disuse during all the upset and unrest on campus,
and now again I gather is very active and serving a real purpose.

Riess: That was the committee that [Clark] Kerr started, and it included
William Wurster, Thomas Church, and Louis de Monte?

Williams: Yes, and I'm trying to think of other names, but at the moment

they escape me. And there was really an office for space assign
ment: we moved people, we shifted people, we did all kinds of
things. That also was at the time when buildings were still
being built on campus, so the decision had to be made, "Whose
building was this to be and who's to go into it?" It was
extremely interesting.

Then I fell into the position (which I later retained)
of publishing the General Catalogue and having all that to-do
which is very involved: assigning all the classes on campus,
assigning all space, except office space. It just kind of grew
like Topsy, and it was extremely interesting to watch the whole
thing develop. I enjoyed every minute of it, up until about
two years before I retired when things were not as interesting
as they had been, or should be, and were not going to change.
I retired in 1977.

226

Riess :

Williams:

Riess:

Williams :

Riess:

Williams ;

What was your title when you retired?

Assistant registrar.

Do you think opportunities for advancement in the administration
of the university are that good, or was it something about you?

It was very different then, really very different. The Personnel
Office was not structured as it is today, and we didn't have
the discriminatory laws all of these things came later. I
think department heads, people who were responsible for large
departments such as the Registrar's Office and the Admissions
Office it was like running one's own business, so they got
the best people they could. It wasn't a matter of interviewing
forty-five people and then giving it to somebody who had earned
it and was in the office and had the experience and so on. That
I don't find of value. But again, I think it's a matter of
timing, at least it was for me; I was just there at the right
time and it was perfect.

And that's also a nice testimonial to being a slightly older
woman coming back and looking for work.

That's right, yes. But it didn't occur to me at any point that
there wasn't somewhere that I'd find something interesting.
And that's why typist clerk didn't bother me; I've never been
able to type, but they found other things for me to do. And
once in a while somebody would say, "This needs to be typed,"
and then I would just kind of stand there. Dear Heaven, I've
never met a typewriter that could spell! [laughs] But at any
rate, yes, it was very different and I didn't care as long as
I got out of the other. It was just too long years on the
Girl Scout board, years with Children's Home Society, charitable
things and all. They still needed help, but my head wasn't
fresh enough at that point to be of any value.

2) The Women's Faculty Club, 1971-1977

Riess: Who asked you to join the Women's Faculty Club, or what was
your first awareness of the club?

Williams: I was aware of the club early on, because of course I came up
here with my predecessor, and went to the Men's Faculty Club
also. But at that time the membership requirement I guess was
administrative assistant and at that point I was a principal
clerk. And after I became an administrative assistant, because

227

Williams: it had disturbed me a great deal that there was this limitation,
I didn't make any effort to join. I really can't remember what
spurred me on to join. But anyway, it was in 1971.

Riess: Well, when you used to come up with your predecessor, what were
your impressions of the club?

Williams: It was very pleasant, oh yes, very different than it is now.
There wasn't the vitality or the liveliness there is now, I
suppose because there are so many more members and it is a more
youthful group. I haven't really thought about it.

Riess: But you would like to have joined if it had been open to you
at that level you felt was appropriate?

Williams: Well, yes, because I'd never been refused admittance to anything
else. [laughs]

Riess: After all, you'd been successful in the community all these
years.

Williams: Yes, it was strange. Well, there is a great deal of difference
on any campus, not just this campus, between the academia and
the administrative offices. This I sensed and disliked intensely.
But again, I wish I could remember what it was that impelled
me to join when I did.

Riess: You don't think it was the invitation of somebody?

Williams: It could have been, it could have been, and it's just left my
mind.

Riess: When you joined did you follow your pattern of being active?

Williams: No, I just joined. It was after I retired that I became a member
of the board.

Riess: Not until 1977?

Williams: 1977, right. Peg Uridge then invited me to become vice president,
which we both agreed entailed nothing at all: no duties
particularly unless oh, just help with this and that. And
then she was taken ill so suddenly in July of '78 and died in
October of '78. There just was no way to avoid this situation
of someone having to take over and take charge. There was no
one else on the board that was retired and had the time to do
it. Now I'm hoping to get the staff moving in such a way and
things laid out in such a way that the standards are not relaxed
and a president could be active on campus and still perform
the duties of president.

228

Riess: When Mary Ann Johnson and I interviewed she pointed out that

she was the first president who had not come from the academic
side. And I guess since her time they've been from the adminis
trative side.

Williams: I'm trying to think in terms of well, Peg Uridge was Librarian,
and that's an academic title, as far as I understand it. It's
kind of an "iffy." But yes, I think you must be right.

Riess: Margaret Thal-Larsen and Mary Lou Norrie were faculty. And
then Peg Uridge, and you.

When someone becomes president, they then appoint their
vice president?

Williams: No, it's an election by the board. Peg Uridge simply asked
if I would be willing to be vice president and I said "yes"
and so it was then put to an election. The by-laws read that
way, that the election is by a majority of the board.

Riess: During that period from 1971 to 1977, how involved were you
in the merger?

Williams: Not at all, with the exception of attending an annual meeting
and trying to find out what values there were in it.

Oh, I'll backtrack slightly. It was time to vote on this,
on the merger, the 1976 vote, and Peg Uridge was president at
the time, and I came to an annual meeting and I really couldn't
get any answers to my quite direct questions. What I was doing
was treading on a number of toes, I suspect. I really wanted
an answer, I wanted to know what was behind it all one way or
another, and I wasn't satisfactorily answered until we (the
members) voted, and then due to some technicality in the law
another vote had to be taken. At that time Josephine Smith
sent the financial statement from the Men's Faculty Club along,
so that we had access to this information. And of course that's
why it was defeated.

Riess: For you there were obvious questions, and yet it was impossible
to get the answers.

Williams: Well, people would answer me, but in their own way. and I didn't
know these people well enough to interpret it. Now since I
have some knowledge of what went on, I'm really very much
surprised at those who were so much in favor of it though it
would have been so detrimental to this club.

229

Riess: Once you got the information you were against the merger?

Williams: Oh yes! There was no question, and I think it changed many
opinions because it was in cold print, how much in debt the
Men's Faculty Club was and how they would use this club.

Riess: When you were on the board, did the club feel divided, or was
it united once it had made that decision?

Williams: I didn't have any feeling of division, but I think it's because
at that time I really didn't know many of these women very well.
Since then, I realize that there must have been a feeling of
division.

Riess: Several resigned, fifteen I think.

Williams: I don't know the number, but yes, several resigned. And I don't
understand that.

Riess: In the years since you've been president has the question of
merger re-emerged?

Williams: No, no.

Riess: So it's really a dead issue now?

Williams: Well, it is as far as we're concerned. And I think the reason
that it's a dead issue is that when we started to move, the
first thing that had to be done was to refurnish the rooms,
to bring the rooms up to standard (and I'm afraid it was my
standard). We just took off then and we haven't stopped since,
and so nobody speaks of anything else, in terms of a merger
or anything of the sort, to my knowledge.

Riess: Because you don't need the merger.
Williams: Right. We didn't ever need it.

3) Presidency, 1978, and Refurnishing the Rooms

Riess: I'm interested in how you have taken the reins and yet dealt

with the enormous sense of history. Many members would probably
be happy just to get you off into the corner and tell you exactly
how to do things .

230

Williams:

Riess:
Williams:

Riess:

Williams:

Well, they've been most kind, most kind. They applaud everything
we do, they're pleased with the way the club looks, it's the
way that they always wanted it to look. We're not actually
in a moneymaking situation, but we're certainly not in business
to lose money. They all recognize this and see that this is
really what they'd been aiming at.

No, I've had no such advisors. It may be that my own
[laughing] effrontery in just coming in and doing may have had
something to do with it.

You were certainly the new broom.

I just couldn't stand back and watch a place with such potential
simply be mediocre. It's not my nature, although I didn't know

that before,
life.

I see now it's followed a pattern throughout my

Have you ever visited any of the residential rooms? We've
had them all painted and they are really beautiful. I've just
bought fresh bedspreads and things like that. As I've said,
checking through the rooms to see what was needed I found one
bathmat, for instance, that somebody had kept putting down even
though someone must have taken a bite out of one corner and
there was a great bleach spot in the center of it. I just picked
it up and threw it away. We don't need that kind of thing,
and I for one wouldn ' t pay money for a room furnished in such
a fashion!

Who should pick it up and throw it away?
conceived of the job that way.

Maybe no maid ever

I think now they might, because you see this has really happened
in a short time, when you consider the age of the club. And
we have one maid now who has been here for some time; the one
that we'd had, who'd been here for nearly ten years, left and
her daughter took her place. Anna Philips 's [the supervising
maid] help is a student, a very fine young woman, but we need
continuity there.

It's the same thing in the dining room. The students who
have returned and who return to us year after year as long as
they're in school see this kind of thir.g. They see a cracked
cup and know that it goes out: it isn't used in service.
Somebody else will not think about it, so that it takes a
certain amount of time. Again, continuity is the answer.

231

Riess: The standards the presidents in the past, I'm assuming, didn't
see their job the way you see your job.

Williams: I think, really and truly Suzanne, that the real problem has
been fear. The club went through such penny to penny days.
Peg Uridge was a fine manager and did all the managing.

Riess: Even though she had a paid manager.

Williams: Right. She did the payrolls, she did the bills, she did the
incoming and outgoing, anything that you can say or think of
in an office, she did it.

Riess: She too was retired when she had the job.

Williams: Right. And of course this filled her days, and very happily.
She couldn't have done anything else, it was her nature, and
she built up a fine financial backlog. (But as you know, we
are non-profit, so that we can only go so far on that kind of
thing or the IRS gets after us. We haven't heard from them
yet because we're doing enough maintenance work and rehabili
tating of the club.) I feel very strongly that each president
is capable of something; we all have areas, strengths, and that
was Peg's, the money that she managed so beautifully.

When I came along it was really fairly simple though we're
still terribly careful to go ahead and do these things. As
a result prices could be raised. People come back year after
year from abroad because this is the only place they want to
stay, because we do take such care.

Riess: I'm sure it made a difference when the turnover in the residents
became established. There was no need to do any rehabilitating
when you had people bedded down year after year.

Williams: Forever, really. They furnished the rooms as they wished. It
was treated at one point, very poorly I think, many years ago,
as a ladies dormitory in a se.ise, and that's really not what
it was meant to be. Now the by-laws limit it to, I think, two
years of residency.

Riess: I get a vision of Lucy Stebbins saying "what it was meant to
be." You believe in the history to that extent?

Williams: Oh, yes. To serve the campus community. I can't remember

reading anywhere that it was meant as a home. I really can't.
Have you read anything along that line?

Riess:

No.

232

Williams: I haven't either. I think that it just simply evolved. These
were all very strong-minded women, so who was to put them out
and where were they to go?

4) An Active, Interested Board

Riess: It has been five years since you became a member of the board,
and now president. What is the composition of your board? How
do you work with the board?

Williams: It's a very active, interested board. We have board meetings
every month and they're always very well attended. We're not
having one in August because everybody's going on vacation in
August and that's the first one missed, I guess I'm not sure
if they always had them in the summertime early on. But everyone
speaks up.

Riess: People are on the board because they want to be on the board?

Williams: Oh yes. We've had one or two for whom it was a status thing,

but they soon dropped out of their own volition. Non-attendance
is just a waste of time for all of us.

Riess: Does the composition reflect the membership's sex and diversity?

Williams: There are eleven board members, including myself, and two are

men. Tom [Thomas G.] Rosenmeyer has just retired from the board,
simply because he's got a Guggenheim again and is going off
to work on that. Daniel Heartz is joining us in September;
John Fleming is from the Law School. We all find this mix very
good, because women can get very bogged down on one little issue
of, oh, maybe twenty-five cents to raise the price of something
in the dining room. So we find it very refreshing, and I think
that a third male would be a good idea it's a good balance.

Riess : Do you think that the men bring out the best in the women?

Williams: Yes. Oh, yes. Because women traditionally have wanted to appear
at their best, and so naturally this is what happens when you're
using your head a little bit more. And it doesn't get into
a gossipy, petty thing at all.

Riess : I wonder what being on a board with all those women brings out
in the men?

233

Williams: [Laughing] Amusement! And sometimes a sense of, "What in
the world could that have been about?"

Riess: Are the men from the academic side?
Williams: Oh, yes. They are both professors.

Riess: What is the balance between academic and non-academic women
members? Do you have an idea?

Williams: I have those figures somewhere, but I can't locate them. I
think the annual meeting minutes might give them to us. You
see, we have far more men members now than we did a year ago
this time.

Riess: Do you get non-academic men as members?

Williams: Oh yes, oh yes. I was just trying to think of the proportion
and I can't really say. I would say there are fewer adminis
trative than there are faculty because we must have all of
Boalt Hall probably because this is the only good food around.
The School of Optometry it's the same thing. I find it a very
pleasant mix to come and go and greet members of both sexes.

Riess: How about the balance between academic and non-academic women
on the board? Is that structured?

Williams: There is not a good balance. Doris Britt she's from the School
of Social Welfare, yes, and she's a field supervisor, so it's
an academic title but the rest are administrative. I'd like
very much to break that up, but I find it is very difficult
to get women faculty members on the board.

Josephine Miles has explained that to me. She's tried
for a long time to organize seminars for women faculty members
and in this way to introduce new women faculty members to the
club and its advantages. Well, we don't have a great many social
affairs; we have several a year, but they'ie not dances, they're
simply pleasant gatherings for members. And she said that these
younger women faculty members are very much involved in their
jobs and generally have classes at lunchtime. They cannot attend
these seminars or gatherings or meetings of such women. As
a result they have no interest in serving on a board; they simply
do not have the time or the energy. As far as coming up here
for lunch, that's fine occasionally, but generally it's a brown
bag lunch in their offices in between classes. So I really
have had a difficult time with getting women faculty members
to serve on the board.

234

Riess: Does Josephine Miles have any suggestions, or is she just
explaining the situation?

Williams: We've both gone through this over and over again for two or

three years now. It's strange, because it would seem that women
could be proud of this club, faculty members.

Riess: Well, Marian Diamond, I think, is more active in the men's
club now.

Williams: She is, but she's still a member here.

Riess: Has that been a pattern, now that the men's club is available
to the academic women?

Williams: Not especially. Some, of course, have found activity there,

but you see those are women who have already served their time
here; they've either been president or they've been on the board
or various committees or helped organize certain functions,
and they really served their time here. I don't know whether
there's more to it than that or not, whether it's more pleasurable
with new faces and so - on, or if in the academic structure there's
a need to move in those circles.

5) Committee Support

Riess: Which are the important committees for you as a president? How
much do you count on your committees?

Williams: I count on them a good deal I like help. Often I have to go
it alone because everybody else works. But there's the budget
and finance committee, which is invaluable. Jerry [Jerome F.]
Thomas is the chairman of that he's a professor of sanitary
engineering.

Riess: These are committees not necessarily from the board?

Williams: Well, there will be a board member, generally. Sally Senior
is on that board as treasurer and I sit in. There are two or
three other "-.ambers. The library committee Alice Davis, who's
a board member, is in charge of that. She's gone through all
the many books that we've had left to us and that has been quite
a job. She passes on the ones that we can't use or have
duplicates of, and she's arranged the library to much better
advantage than it was before. She's sifted through and so on.

235

Williams: She will also be in charge of this picture taking business that
I was saying about the garden. [Mrs. Williams refers to an
album of photographs of the garden memorial areas, planned to
be a companion to photographs of the club treasures.]

The house decorating committee has really and truly evolved
into primarily Maxine Rockwell and myself. Again, who has the
time to go through the rooms to do these things that have to
be done?

Riess: That's what the house committee is?

Williams: Right, primarily. And then again, right or wrong, we've moved
very rapidly on some of these things if you can believe red
plastic curtains in a residential room! It was necessary!

Riess: It's better not to be operating by committee on something like
that.

Williams: Really, truly. For instance, Eleanor van Horn was in the

other day and I was trying to get Lucy Stebbins's portrait out
of the dining room, because that's been a source of great comment.
Some members were bitter about that; they thought I had just
put her behind the door. Well, it all comes down to Dean
Davidson's portrait in the lounge, which I discovered was
brought over here for safe-keeping in '76. I thought it belonged
to the club, but I discovered that it is the same situation
as Ida Sproul's portrait, which is in the vault, as you know,
for safe-keeping.

When I-House [International House] builds a room, a Sproul
room, they'll use the portrait, but it should be out of here,
out of our responsibility. Dean Davidson too both portraits
came from their respective residence halls [Ida Sproul Hall
and Davidson Hall] where they had been vandalized. There are
members who feel that although Bobbie Davidson lived here for
many years, she was not that important and should not be in
the lounge. Well, there is no other wall big enough to put
her on [laughs] .

I felt very strongly that many of our members don't get
into the lounge, they're in the dining room, and it seemed to
me that Lucy Stebbins was just perfect in there on that white
wall, and the lighting was perfect. We took her out of here
[library] because this is now the Margaret Uridge Library. But
I'm still getting letters.

Riess: Now she's out in the hall.

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Williams: Yes. [Two months later both the Sproul and Davidson portraits
were returned to the university, and Lucy Stebbins's portrait
is at last in the lounge, and very handsome it is, too. KVW,
9/21/82]

When Eleanor van Horn was at lunch one day, and I was at
my wits end, I said, "Eleanor, we've got to measure and put
Lucy somewhere else." So we measured and it just fit. It's
not really as it should be, but it's there [dining room, 7/21/81]
and it's better. And I appreciated Margaret Murdock's reaction,
"Oh, I so enjoy seeing Bobbie's smiling face in the morning."

Riess: Could you put Bobbie Davidson up in her old room and call it
the Bobbie Davidson Room?

Williams: We've had that come up too. Florence Minard suggested that
the rooms be named after various members, and I said that I
felt that could be left to another president [laughs]. I'm
not about to enter into that. Who makes the selection? We
only have twenty-six rooms.

Riess: What does the budget committee handle?

Williams: They make up the budget for the coming year, and they then make
recommendations, such as, "We should spend more money in this
area," or, "We should raise more salaries," and so forth and
so on. They use the quarterly reports that come in from our
accountant. They work those over. The dining room, for instance,
if it's not breaking even they then recommend that prices be
raised. The board policy has been that the rooms will support
the dining room. That's what we can do for our members, not
raise prices so that they can't come to lunch. So it's I
mustn't say casual, but it's an advisory kind of thing.

Remember, when we started this we didn't have records.
We didn't have a cook; we got all of our food from the dining
commons. Now we've got salaries and we've got lots of things
to look at that we didn't have before.

Riess: What are the other board committees that are important?
Williams: Well, membership.

Riess: Are there serious decisions about memberships? Do people who
apply have to be screened?

237

Williams: No, no. I now see the reason, though I don't think it was

entirely this, why no one below administrative assistant [was
accepted] . In those days administrative assistant was a big
title here on campus. We've had some people who couldn't,
even as low as our dues are, they couldn't manage payment. They'd
eat lunch all the time, and then suddenly here was this sizable
bill. That was a pretty good reason for limiting it to people
whose salaries were commensurate with the costs.

Now I would say we include Administrative Assistant II
I'm not sure of the title now but it seems reasonable that
way, because senior clerks come and go and move and change and
don't have the salary.

Riess: So is the membership committee a routine ?

Williams: Actually, there was a big conversation for a long time about

how we could build up the membership. Well, we have not turned
a hand. I sign a new application card every time I come in,
and sometimes three, four and five. And I sign them only because
Lotte's not here. Lotte Dadone is the chairman, and she signs
the membership cards, but I'm here so much that it's just easier
for me to do it than to bother Lotte and they'd have to wait
maybe for some time. They all come in, have lunch "I've got
to be a member!" [laughs] So they don't want to wait.

6) Management

Riess: What is the management structure here? How do the president
and the board work with the management?

Williams: The board likes to think that it sets policy only, but it gets

involved in a lot of other activities because I involve it in

them. I feel that every board member should have a pretty good

idea of what's going on here. At any rate, they set policy.

Then we have a manager, who is at present Mrs. Rockwell.
We have a bookkeeper, Mrs. Waldburger, and Mrs. [Evelyn] Nichols,
comes in and does payroll and accounts payable and receivable
and all manner of things. Then of couroe we have Chikako Pierce,
who is on the desk where the telephone is answered and makes
reservations and checks people out and checks people in and
all that sort of thing. We have student help in the evening
and on Saturdays and Sundays and holidays. And Mrs. Rockwell
answers to the board.

238

Williams: Heretofore, Mrs. Uridge had a secretary, who at present is the
night supervisor here, has a room, and she sat in on all the
board meetings, and therefore reported everything to the staff
about what needed to be done.

Riess: That was a chain of communication that had been set up by Peg
Uridge.

Williams: Apparently. I saw no need for it because we had a manager, and
you must understand that in those days and this seems silly
because it was only three or four years ago she was paid
something like $700 a month. Salaries were like that here.
And again that extends from that fear of money, whether we would
have enough.

Riess: That was the manager's salary, not the night manager's.

Williams: Right. The night manager doesn't have a salary. She works
on campus, lives here. I had been president some time when
I realized that in order to quell complaints about being over
worked (the understanding was that she would supervise
activities that were going on here like weddings and receptions
on the weekends) , the board voted that she was to have at least
a hundred dollars a month to offset this, and this to be tax-
free and so forth. Which did what it was meant to.

We have a capable staff; all they needed was to be let
do their jobs and given the reins. It took some time to get
them to understand that it was all right to make a decision.

Riess: Does the manager herself attend the board meetings?

Williams: No, because the board then decided that there was no reason
for the manager to have to take that much extra time out of
a very busy day .

At one point we did meet from 5:30 on, and that we changed
to the 4:30 to 6:30, because people could easily come here at
that time. If people want to socialize they can do it after
the board meeting. We have really very quick board meetings.
The most I think we've ever gone to is maybe ten minutes to
7:00 p.m. Most people have had a busy day! We can resolve
these things we don't have to spend a whole night on them.

The board decided that Mrs. Rockwell and I could work
together and that I would come to the board with things that
Mrs. Rockwell felt were needed and that that was enough liaison.
If I feel that something can be presented better by Mrs. Rockwell

239

Williams: I ask her to come, and she's always quite willing to. Or she

can write a letter to the board, this kind of thing. From there,
then, it filters on down.

Riess: Are there men in any of the management positions other than
the waiters?

Williams: No. David Horn is our accountant, but he's his own man, he
has his own business.

Riess: You said what a refreshing addition it was having men on the
board; have you ever considered having men on the staff?

Williams: I guess we did try at one point. Not on the staff, but as a
custodial thing. But you see we've only this year, in my
estimation, reached a point with salaries that even a retired
man might be interested in it. They were always so little.

Riess: Are they not on a scale commensurate with the rest of the
university?

Williams: Now they are, but they weren't before, when you compare $700
to the salary of a residence hall manager, which I use as the
equivalent on campus.

Riess: I guess maybe there's a history of people, like Margaret Murdock,
almost volunteering their time, just saying, "Well, I'll do it."

Williams: That's exactly what people did, I think, because there was really
a need. I know that you heard, as I heard last year for the
first time, that at one point there was so little interest
shown in the club that it was going to be sold to the university.
They were going to take it over and use it as library carrels.
Unbelievable! And somebody stepped in it was Florence Minard
who finally got the word out. "This is what's happening."
Isn't it interesting that there's always some individual who
comes along at the right time. Again, I insist that it's all
timing.

Riess: But it all seems a little bit brinksman-like; it's only at the
crisis point that that person stands up.

Williams: Yes, yes. And that's exactly what I want to keep tlie club from
now. It's important that it just move of its own momentum.

240

7) The Kitchen

Riess: What has been the evolution of the kitchen in the years that
you've been here?

Williams: I can only really tell you about these years because before
I gather there was a manager and his wife and they did the
cooking and so forth and so on.

Riess: Actually he didn't do the cooking. There was a famous "Katy"
who did the cooking, Katy who made the wonderful popovers and
roast beef.

Williams: [laughs] Yes, I'll be interested in reading this in these oral
histories.

When I came into it there was a Mrs. Lee all I can think
of is her nickname, which was Midge and she had done this kind
of thing in the public school. She was about five foot tall
and energy you can't believe! A charming woman, and she acted
as a hostess, in a sense, in the dining room. She would take
the food that was brought over from the dining commons and add
parsley, add chives, decorate it in some way so that the presen
tation was much more pleasing although the food was quite
mediocre, because the dining commons is that way.

Riess: This is the dining commons which was on the bottom floor of
the Student Union?

Williams: That's right. And so we struggled along that way for a while,
gradually buying things elsewhere to fill in, to make it more
attractive and better tasting. Then we decided to go all out
and get a cook. Alice Boschan, who had been with the dining
commons, came in to cook.

Riess: When was that?

Williams: It would have been about two years ago last December, probably
'79.

She made salads, and more and more we drew away from the
dining commons they were very arbitrary, very arrogant, about
what we could have and couldn't have. Amazingly enough, I
reacted to that in a very different way than they expected.
We found we were buying our own meat, because they were sending
us roast beef it was another cut of beef that was sliced, but

241

Williams: it wasn't what we call roast beef. So all this time we were
gradually bringing standards up and up until finally we just
simply closed our arrangement with the dining commons.

Then we experimented with deliveries from Berkeley Market,
but they stopped delivering. Now, Mrs. Rockwell and Mrs. Nichols
take turns picking the desserts up from Neldam's. Dreyer's
delivers (and I don't remember what kind of ice cream it was
before that). But in all of this too there's been development
in the kitchen. We now have an absolutely fantastic stove.
I don't know whether you've ever seen it. But that was an
experience! If you've ever shopped for a stove like that, these
great, great monsters, absolutely stunning, from somewhere out
in Hayward or San Leandro, somewhere on the waterfront.

Then Mrs. Boschan had a very unfortunate accident; she
and her husband were driving on Arlington Avenue and somehow
or other he lost control of the car and it flipped over that
big embankment. Happily, neither one of them was hurt it was
really miraculous except Alice had a back and neck problem.

Lori Gallo, who filled in and worked with Mrs. Boschan,
took over absolutely beautifully in between her classes. Then
we got another part-time worker I think Faye had worked with
the dining commons. She works four or five hours (she only
wants so much time you see), and she of course is invaluable.

About Christmas time, Mrs. Boschan decided that she just
couldn't do it anymore because it would be a matter of being
here and then not being here for two days, this kind of thing
ir really was very unfortunate for them. But in the meantime
as usual our perfect timing Julienne LeBlanc came from the
East Coast to be with her parents and grandparents here in
Berkeley and she, of course, with her professional background,
was ideal.

Riess: You had advertised the job?

Williams: No, we never seem to advertise. Just suddenly by word of mouth
here she was, available. She came in and took over and hasn't
stopped since. We now have new refrigeration, which we had
to have before we could even go for an alcoholic license,
[laughs] That's a free phrase, "alcoholic license."

Riess: Liquor license.

Williams: Club license is what it's called.

242

Riess: In the history, Mr. Abbo was a believer in offering a little

something before dinner. I think that was all right if it was
being given to the members; it just couldn't be sold without
a license. How has liquor been handled since then?

Williams: The same way. When we've had luncheons , new members' luncheons,
you'll find that champagne is served at 11:30 a.m., or even
earlier, as the ladies get here. That is not part of the price
of the meal, because we cannot sell it. I've considered it
simply part of our getting to know one another, the warmth and
enjoyment of the occasion. Heretofore I think it had always
been sherry, but I find sherry very heavy. That's the way it's
been handled. Of course anyone could bring a bottle of wine
in to serve to luncheon guests. We will be serving only wine
and beer. We have no desire to have a bar; I don't even want
to be part of that. I don't see where it could be appropriately
placed.

Riess: Wine and beer would be just fine.

Williams: Well, this club license includes hard liquor also, but that

will be ideal because caterers sometimes require that, or parties
for some-such wish to have it. So now we have to get involved
with wine distributors and beer distributors and so forth. I
think what we'll do is have a house wine and sell by carafe
or individual glass, and probably have champagne available to
anyone who'd like Mrs. Gordon-Britland was having a group today
and a bottle of champagne might have been a very pleasant sort
of thing. So that's what we have in mind. But I had no idea
we'd have this billboard [public notice of intention to sell
liquor] on the front door [laughs].

Riess: Do you expect anyone to object?

Williams: I've had no objections. I've heard nothing. In fact, the day
we were putting it up people were coming into lunch and said,
"Ah, we can have a glass of wine in thirty days." Something
of this sort.

Riess: Is the license an expensive outlay?
Williams: No, a club license is only $336 dollars.

You have no idea what that experience was like. You think
about bureaucracies around here, you should go down there some
time and see what you're up against, [laughs] "Would you 'girls'
come over here and sit down," that sort of thing.

Riess:

[laughing] Girls! Golly!

243

8) The Gardens

Riess:

Williams:

Riess:
Williams:

Riess:

Williams:

Riess:

Williams;

Riess:

Williams:

You mentioned excavations that have to be done because of this
long-term problem of flooding and damage and we talked a bit
about the gardener and that kind of responsibility I can see
why anyone who wasn't retired couldn't take over the presidency.
What are you going to try to do about that?

Well, I had considered, and in fact I talked to Josephine Miles
about a search committee, a group of people, maybe five or six,
who could just go through campus and see what they could find
in the way of a replacement.

There's no one on the board currently?

Well, Lotte Dadone is retired and she has accepted the vice-
presidency. Tom Rosenmeyer was vice president and has since
retired from the board, as I had mentioned. It could be that
Lotte might take that on, but I do know that they're considering
buying some property up Benicia way, and that's quite a little
distance to come. But again, if the place is running the way
it should, then it might not require this kind of time.

Why don't you want to do it forever?
[laughs]

Now that you've got it working beautifully, don't you want to
enjoy the pleasure?

Well, I do, but I have this thing about the day I'll hear somebody
say, "Why doesn't she give somebody else a chance?"

Why don't you say a few things about the garden,
something of interest to you.

I know it's

There are many members who at one time or another in their lives
donate or leave money to the club, or artifacts of some value
or great value witness the Oriental rugs. We've almost completed
the restoration of the club (or rehabilitated it, however one
wishes to term it), so that when checks for memorials to certain
individuals came in I'd think, "I don't really want to put that
money into saying Mrs. So-and-So recovered the sofa in the name
of So-and-So." It didn't seem appropriate.

In looking about and also kind of looking out to see
where we could get cut flowers, which I think are part of the
club, again we go to timing. At that moment Joanna Kaufmann

244

Williams: became landscape architect, and she's very much into this sort
of thing and there was an immediate rapport and it all opened
up into some beautiful future plans. It occurred to me at lunch
one day that that [memorial garden gifts] would be an ideal
way to do it, because most people I know love gardens. Maybe
they're not gardeners themselves, but it's a living sort of
thing.

I put it in the next newsletter that after having checked
with a few people about it that we thought this is what we would
do. And it's been received with great enthusiasm, really, because
I think there are lots of charities to give to but, well, people
who really love this club feel very close to it. They like
to have that sense of still being active, of doing something
for the club and in the name of a friend. So the garden has
been quite successful.

Our new rose garden almost every other day there can be
a bouquet out of that. That's just the beginning now. Eventually
we will have pictures and names of donors and so on, and I think
we can just kind of keep going at it. And did I tell you about
the two crab apple trees that were planted that were individual
gifts?

Riess: No. How will the white flower garden enter into this?

Williams: There are lots of whites, with the white agapanthus and the
white delphiniums and foxgloves and so forth up in the east
corner. The semi-circle in the front will be really very formal.
The Japanese anemones will be transplanted around because they
really are so delightful and useful.

The change will start where the ivy is, because that's
really taken over. The Japanese magnolias need to have some
thing less high and weedy around them because they're so handsome
in themselves. But all the ferns will remain as they are because
they're used by campus classes. Apparently this is the only
place where some of them appear. We will ?.gain use the white
campanula; over where the ivy is the campanula will be planted
to drop over the walls. The plans are downstairs, so I can
show them to you if you'd like.

Riess: Why do you have such an excellent collection of ferns? Did
old members do that?

Williams: I have a feeling that much of this garden was planted when Ben,

the gardener, would see an empty spot and he'd bring us something
that was to be thrown out or pulled up.

245

Riess: He also works at University House, or used to?

Williams: Right, yes. I guess they must all have access to something

there, because for a long time he planted little petunias here
in the front that he'd get from somewhere, which was much
appreciated. I suspect that's how the ferns came. And then,
you know, lots of things are planted by birds and the wind,
lots of things. I can't say really. But it will be handsome
when it's done.

The hedge you may have noticed is really quite in need
of trimming, but we're letting it get higher than the automobiles
so that it will block that out. I also have this strange feeling
that hedges don't have to go downhill; they don't need to follow
the contour of the land but can go straight across. So this
is what we're doing. Then on the east side all that parking
up there won't be visible from the dining room. It'll take
a little while, but by degrees it's coming nicely. We hope
to add more azaleas and rhododendron in the rear garden. I'd
like to see the club reach a point with its garden that cut
flowers could come all year round from our own garden.

Riess: Who cuts the flowers?

Williams: It's kind of a joint affair. When I come in and there's been
absolutely no free time for anyone to do it, then I do it.
Mrs. Waldburger is now back from her extended vacation and so
she did it this week and it hasn't been necessary for me to
take it on. Evelyn Nichols enjoys it too, and I think that's
a nice break for them. You know they're here in the club all
day long: they eat lunch here.

Riess: I would think being allowed to go out and pick a flower would
be a godsend.

Williams: Exactly. I know I've said, "At lunchtime, why don't you go
somewhere else?" Two of them went to the Men's Faculty Club
for luncheon one day and came back and said, "Thank you very
much, but no thank you." Lunch is included in salaries for
these people, so there really is another benefit as it is
included for students.

Riess: Yours is not a salaried position is it?

Williams: No, no. Though the board said that I should have gas mileage
and so forth. But I've never felt that way. It's really very
pleasant and I enjoy it. I finally agreed to it, but I interpret

246

Williams: it this way: if I'm working here, as I will be all of this

week, then the club can pick up my luncheon check, that's fine.
But if I'm socializing, then that's my affair. So I'm the one
who makes the differentiation. That's why when Betsy asked
me what I was doing today I said, "Working!" [laughs]

I mean, how do you figure things like that? And I do so
much at home on the telephone. And it is minor in a way.
Someone said, "Well, your telephone." I thought, what percentage
would you take off, how would you work this out? I don't find
that necessary.

Riess: Your taste and your thoughts about the hedge and how things
should look, I think it is difficult to hand that on to the
next president or to figure out a way to make it in perpetuity.

Williams: I don't think you can, I don't think so. A woman of Lotte's
calibre will carry it on there's no question but if there
is somebody who's working full-time and can't give it the
attention, and then the staff changes, then you could have
problems again.

Riess: It might be good to have some of those committees stronger.
Is there a garden committee?

Williams: No. I've hesitated about that. Joanna is a professional and

she's a club member also. It took us a couple of meetings before
she realized that I did know what a flower was. So I can't
think it would be very good to have people bringing plants down
or suggesting things to her. Though I must say we're freer
about that because we are paying for this now. The university
can't at this point. And I'd much rather that they pay for
the excavation work which they will have to do and pay for,
and which has to be done, than the garden. I mean, I don't
care a bit about finding the rocks that go under those trenches.

Riess: What is the arrangement?

Williams: Well, you see part of the agreement with the Regents is that

they take care of the exterior, the grounds and gardens. Now,
nobody had looked at this garden in, oh, I suppose, ten or
fifteen years maybe. I talked to [Fred] Warnke about it and
he came up and I was telling him things that I thought should
be done. You see, we do have weddings here and they love to
use the deck and the brick terrace, and if it's nothing but
weeds, even though they're mowed, it's not a good idea.

247

Williams: How we got into it is that Mr. [Ari] Inouye who was the campus
architect and who is absolutely a marvelous man, had retired,
and Joanna had recently graduated, maybe two or three years
ago, from landscape architecture here. She came up and we talked
and she was so enthusiastic. She's a live-wire and a beautiful
woman .

She came back with this handsome plan, but it was really
within reason. It wasn't a great fountain and all that sort
of thing. In fact, we're following it. They did the rose garden,
and I guess the university did pay for that the labor and the
plants and the removal of two trees that we were always afraid
were going to fall over onto somebody, they'd been there so
many years. Then, that's when the freeze was announced, that
they could spend no more money until further notice. That's
when I began to think about this and that's when the whole thing
worked out with the memorials and so forth.

Riess: So, you can have her services, but as far as materials and labor

Williams: Unless there's a turnabout and the university can see its way
clear to providing some of these things, but really I find no
difficulty in helping the university out.

9) Club Finances

Riess:

Williams:
Riess:

Williams:

Riess:

Do you feel free to get money from outside sources? Can you
work that way, or does your money have to come in through the
development office?

We don't get money from anywhere except the members.

If you wanted to develop your garden you might very well look
to a potential outside donor and make a plea, say,' "We feel
that you're someone who could appreciate this space like we
do and we'd like to, etcetera."

That's not my style at all. I can't see any need for it in
the first place, I really can't. We can only develop this to
such a degree. There are those who find it handier to pick
up plants here than they might at a nursery.

[laughing]
said.

I hope our readers will understand what you've just

248

Williams: Well, we had a very handsome ceramic pot good-looking, not
of great value but it was a lovely soft green and it was
planted with a lovely white tree azalea, and the first football
game last season it disappeared from the entry.

Riess: So that restrains your ardor.

Williams: Oh absolutely! But then the other thing is that there is just
so much money that the club can absorb before it is seen as
a profit-making operation.

What we consider which is important is the maintenance
of the club. Salaries are very important in my estimation.
If people are not rewarded for what they are doing everyone
who works here is gung ho and all in favor of the club there's
something wrong with the management. So we've got places to
put any profit.

It's not possible to get an answer from the IRS as to how
much money a non-profit organization can have before it hits
the danger point. I have to be very careful that we are in
the right investment areas, which are treasury bonds, government
backed, there's no question. I'd like to see us reach a nice,
comfortable point. I don't even know what the figure would
be so that we have a nice, tidy backlog. We have one now but
I think it could be more.

Riess: Who is in charge of those investments?

Williams: The board.

Riess: You come to the board with recommendations?

Williams: Yes. I try very hard at board meetings, as Mary Ann said, not
to state my own opinions. But I'm afraid everything I say or
think shows on my face, so I'm not awfully successful at that.
There are enough very shrewd women on the board, let alone the
men, so that th^ investments are well-considered.

Riess: So that's part of the monthly meetings, talking about the
investments?

Williams: Yes, or where they are and so forth and so on.

Riess: There was a time, back in the sixties, when fund raising was

a responsibility, tea parties and minor fund raising. I wondered
whether there were some restrictions on the club's freedom to
go and look for funds.

249

Williams: I don't know whether there would be restrictions, that we'd

have to go through the Development Office and so on. Actually,
I think the best fund raising is a good dining room.

What has grown and again we come back to the dining room
and the general atmosphere of the club there are groups in
University Hall that will only meet here. The Chancellor's
Office will only meet here. We try very hard to restrict the
lounge to I'd like to reach the point where we don't serve
luncheon in there at all. The rugs, everything, show the effect.
And yet there are groups of forty or so that just have to meet
there. So, what is there to be done?

But that kind of thing, departmental meetings yes, I think
it's increased. I know it's the food, because they stay here
for lunch, they don't break the meeting and go somewhere else.

Riess: They pay a fee to use it for a meeting?

Williams: Yes, they pay a fee if it's only a meeting. If they're having
lunch here then that's another story. And Maxine makes that
determination because there are many ins and outs: do we serve
coffee? Do they want sweet rolls? Oh, it gets very involved.

10. Future Plans

Riess: Do you think that the club will expand its physical facilities
ever?

Williams: Oh, I don't know about "ever."

Riess: Is there a master plan for the club to burst through one of
the walls?

Williams: No. Actually, I think it's very manageable the way it is.

So often with expansion it leads to disaster. We're expanding
our breakfast service. It's been a continental breakfast and
then toast is available and fruit maybe I guess not even that
much. But the continental breakfast is included in the room
rate. Now we're going to have a chef in the kicchen, and dining
room service. There will be fruits in season, all kinds of
cereals, breads, hot breads and so on.

Riess: From your kitchen or would that be from Neldam's?

250

Williams: No, our kitchen. That's another point that I want to reach,

where the desserts are all made here. I don't see any reason

why not. The place is not that big. That's why I think it
can be just a jewel and stay the size it is.

Then also, I think it would be fun to try and open that
dining room breakfast to members.

Riess: I think that morning breakfast meetings would also be very
attractive to a lot of the departments.

Williams: I think so. Here we go again.

Riess: The ideas I'm sure just sort of gallop off on their own.

Williams: They do. And it's interesting: mention it to somebody and
they take it off in another direction.

Riess: Can you make any interesting comparisons to the kind of volunteer
work you were doing up until 1956, working with women then,
and working in this situation with the women now?

Williams: It's very different, from the standpoint that all of us were
homemakers, no one worked, it was all volunteer work we were
doing. Our children all knew one another, all went to the same
schools. It was a closed society really, and eventually quite
dull, though we didn't realize it, I don't suppose, until on
stepping out that made a difference.

Riess: It was dull because the same characters

Williams: The characters never changed. And if someone introduced some
thing and it wasn't generally accepted, then it was in a sense
taboo. That's why I found the university such marvelous joy,
because of the youthfulness around and the stimulating thinking
and the changes. Oh yes, it was very different. But at least
to me in its time it had its own value certainly. Another life
however; I look back and it looks very different.

Riess: Why did you think we should have an oral history of the Women's
Faculty Club?

Williams: [laughs] Well, simply because so often this sort of thing is
let go too long and those that have that information are gone
and there is just no way to retrieve it.

Riess:

Was there some impetus in the last year and a half?

251

Williams: The more that I talked to people, and then my own family

experience, brought me to this realization early on and then
it was simply applied here. And then of course this was almost
more interesting because of the varied personalities involved.
I think it's very important, and I think it should be picked
up again in is ten years too soon, or fifteen?

Riess: What else could possibly happen, President Williams? [laughs]
Williams: You don't think so? I think lots more could happen.
Riess: I feel that the club's really been through everything.

Williams: Oh, no. One of my dreams, and it may be that that might be
the one thing that would let me continue on, is that I think
we should serve dinner eventually. I had hoped to start that
this fall, but in talking to Julienne and Maxine I realized
that we hadn't started to advertise for a chef in time, because
there has to be an assistant chef at least. Julienne will
surely be in charge of the kitchen still, but we would need
someone to come in at two or three o'clock if dinner's served
from five to seven o'clock. We have to have dishwashers, we
have to have waiters. You know the whole rigamarole is repeated
again, really. We're just not quite ready for that yet. I
think the market's out here, I really do.

We have to be really innovative about it because it will
only duplicate lunch otherwise. We want to avoid that, and
we won't have a salad bar. But then there's the question,
"Do you have any choice of entrees?" Do you perhaps have two?
Do you include soup and salad or do you have it all a la carte?
Oh, the questions!

What really started this in my head was the residents.
In the wintertime and you know we really have a short space
of dark time here, when it's dark from five o'clock on, but
still there's no place for these people to go. We have
kitchens, one on the second floor and one on the third floor,
for maybe making toast, or heating a little soup or something,
but not for cooking.

Most residents have cookies or this or that in their rooms,
or they go over to the Men's Faculty Club. I think most
residents here eat lunch, an entree, and then dinner is rather
slim. I know it would be a convenience to them to have the
dining room open. So, do we open it only to residents, do we
open it only to members? All of these things have to be
settled.

252

Riess: I can imagine how some of the people who've gone through the
history of closing the dining room might begin to blanch at
the very idea.

Williams: Actually, I didn't have any negative responses. I talked to

people around and about in the club membership and heard, "Oh,
that would be marvelous." There are lots cf women who do not
want to be out at night, so we could be here at five, have a
pleasant dinner, and still get home at a decent hour.

Also, thinking in terms of Hertz Hall and Zellerbach,
people could have dinner here and then stroll down. They might
park down there and walk up, so then their cars are there.
There are all kinds of possibilities for this.

Riess: Why didn't it support itself in the past?

Williams: Because it was not good enough. That's about all I can say.
Also, the membership was much less.

Riess: But primarily you would say it was not good enough.

Williams: I would say so. And I shouldn't, because I didn't experience
the times when the people were all here who were doing such
fancy things, at least the ones I've hearc 1 about.

Riess: That would tempt you to stay on.

Williams: I'd feel terribly responsible. As I told Julienne, I wouldn't
be averse at all that if it didn't go over, except for the
residents, that we would just close it to members and have it
for residents only. Then I realized she's quite young and
she's only been here since January and that she just couldn't
face it if it didn't go. So we have to have the right assistant
chef. We could start it the first of the year. I don't know.
This may all develop and I'm willing to wait and see what
happens.

Riess: Have you brought it up before the board?

Williams: Oh, yes! They've known you see this board, we probably operate
very differently from most boards, and they really know every
thing that goes on here. Sometimes they'll say, or John will

253

Williams: say, "I thought we were just policy setting advisors," and

I'll say, "John, we have got to know what's going on, that's
all." We've had some pilferage problems and so on and they
have got to know what's going on here; I have got to use their
heads too, which I don't think is unreasonable.

Transcriber John McPherson
Final Typist: Catherine Winter

254

APPENDICES Women's Faculty Club

A. Building Committee of the Women's Faculty Club, Inc., $50,000 bond

issue, dated December 15, 1921, showing original design for club building. 255

B. A copy of Stock Certificate No. 2, issued to Edith M. Coulter. 258

C. Handwritten reminiscences of the club, by G. Gordon-Britland. 259

D. Interview history from A Life in Community Service, oral history of Emma
Moffat Mclaughlin, Regional Oral History Office, 1968. 263

E. The Faculty Clubs, and Faculty Wives, from The Centennial Record of the
University of California. 1968. 275

F. Florence Minard's role in saving the club building, Mills Quarterly, Mills
College, August 1981. 277

G. A letter to F. Minard from H.J. Mardis, building inspector for the City

of Berkeley, December 14, 1970. 278

H. A letter to club members from L. Czarnowski, M. Dornin, F. Minard, H.
Nicewonger, E. Scott, and J. Smith, January 5, 1971. 281

I. A letter to club members from M.L. Norrie, February 23, 1971. 284

J. Information pertaining to the 1971 gift to the University of California,
Berkeley by the Walter Haas family, with attached Faculty Club proposals,
October 21, 1971. 287

K. Proposed principles for the Joint Operation of The Faculty Clubs, sent

to Women's Faculty Club members, June 3, 1971. 293

L. A letter to club members, from M.L. Norrie, July 6, 1972. 295

M. Women's Faculty Club Review Committee, progress report to the Board of
Directors, December 6, 1972. 297

N. Resolution of Board of Directors of the Women's Faculty Club, September

15, 1976. 300

0. Statement against the proposed merger, September 28, 1976. 301

P. "A Financial Warning," to club members, from J. Smith, November 11,

1976. 302

$50,000 ISSUE

$60,000 AUTHORIZED

Building Committee of The Women's Faculty Club, Inc.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

6% Serial Gold Bonds '

Dated December 15, 1921 Due Serially as Shown Below *

Non-callable and non-convertible. Coupon Bonds of $1000 and $500 denomination, interest payable
semi-annually on June 15 and December 15 at the office of '

The Oakland Bank (formerly The Oakland Bank of Savings) '

Bonds on sale at the

BERKELEY COMMERCIAL AND SAVINGS BANK

Northeast Corner Center Street and Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley

MATURITIES

$ 5,000.00 December 15, 1926 $ 9,500.00 December 15, 1936

$ 7,500.00 December 15, 1931 $13,000.00 December 15, 1941

$15,000.00 December 15, 1946
PAR VALUE AND ACCRUED INTEREST

BUILDING COMMITTEE DIRECTORS

KATHARINE SCOTT BISHOP President ALICE P. TABOR, Treasurer

MARY F. PATTERSON, Vice-President NELLA J. MARTIN, Secretary

BARBARA N. GRIMES

WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB DIRECTORS

LUCY WARD STEBBINS, President MARY F. PATTERSON

JESSICA PEIXOTTO, Vice-President AGNES F. MORGAN

SARAH R. DAVIS, Secretary-Treasurer HELEN W. FANCHER

EDITH M. COULTER

256

THE CLUB
ORGANIZATION

AND MEMBERSHIP

The Women's Faculty Club was organized September 29, 1919. Its active mi
bership averaging ninety-five persons comprises only women holding Rege
appointments at the University of California. An equal number of associate m
bers is chosen from women throughout the state who have made some defi;
contribution in professional, educational, social, literary, or artistic fields.

THE BUILDING The Building Committee was nominated by the Board of Directors of

COMMITTEE OF Women's Faculty Club and elected by the club. It was incorporated September

THE WOMEN'S 1920, under the laws of the State of California as a non-profit making corpora'

FACULTY CLUB, Inc. "whose sole function shall be to build and equip a club house for the sole purp

of selling this club house to the Women's Faculty Club at cost or less than c
and without any profit whatsoever to this corporation." It has a paid-up memi
ship subscription amounting to $10,000.00. Membership in the Women's Faci
Club carries with it membership in the Building Committee of the Women's Faci
Club, Inc., by virtue of one share of stock purchased as initiation fee.

PURPOSE OF
THE ISSUE

LOCATION

THE BUILDING

SECURITY

TENANTS

INCREASING
MEMBERSHIP

The proceeds of these bonds, which are the direct obligation of the Build
Committee, will be used to construct and equip a club house to provide lh
accommodations and a social meeting place for the women of the faculty of
State University and for the associate members of the club.

The Regents of the University have granted to the Women's Faculty Club, r
free, a beautiful and picturesque site on the campus, near the College Ave
entrance, within one block of the street car lines, and within three minutes wall
the principal college buildings. A plan of the lot and its location is shown on
sheet.

The plan of the house, as the accompanying sketch indicates, present;
three-story building with a high basement, to be carried out in stucco. The lo
floor will contain dining rooms, kitchen, storage rooms, and a janitor's apartm
The first floor is to be devoted to social quarters for the club, namely: lounge, In
room, writing room, library, committee room. It will also include dressing re
facilities, and an apartment for the manager. The second and third floors comp
twenty-six living rooms with an adequate number of bathrooms, shower baths
sleeping porches. Service rooms for general use are to be installed on each fl
The dining room will offer restaurant facilities and is to be operated on a financi
independent basis.

The land upon which the club house is situated remains the property of
University. The property of the Women's Faculty Club and its Building Commi
consists in the club house and its equipment. Interest and sinking fund will
derived from rentals of living quarters and dining room, and from club dues
fees. Adequate insurance against fire will be provided.

The Women's Faculty Club is pledged to purchase from its Building Commi'

"the club house and its equipment on a deferred payment purchase plan for a s

not to exceed the actual cost of the club house and its equipment." Until <

purchase is consummated the Women's Faculty Club agrees to lease the club ho

ffrom the Building Committee for an amount equivalent to the semi-annual p

I ments to be devoted to the sinking fund and interest. This amount will ai

matically reduce the purchase price of the club house by so much each year, so t

when the bonded indebtedness is amortized the club will be in complete owners

of the club house.

The Women's Faculty Club will, in turn, sublet the living quarters to
members.

Such a club house on the University campus will provide urgently needed he
ing facilities for the women of the faculty. The unique position occupied by
Women's Faculty Club as a social club attached to the State University assures
of a permanent and increasing membership.

ING

JINGS AND
INDITURES

257

In order to provide a sinking fund for the retirement of the bonds, the Building
Committee of the Women's Faculty Club, Inc., has agreed to set aside semi-annually
a sum of $2000, applicable to principal and interest, said sum to be derived from
rental paid by the Women's Faculty Club as aforesaid.

The following is a conservative estimate of the yearly earnings and expenditures
of the club house as planned.

EXPENDITURES

Club service (exclusive of

dining room) $3,000 00

Lights 600.00

Water 350.00

Telephone 500.00

General Expenses (laun
dry, etc.) 1,400.00

Depreciation 1,000.00

Insurance and Taxes 260.00

Club expenses 700.00

EARNINGS

Rentals, living quarters

and dining room $10,920.00

Dues and fees , 2,000.00

$12,920.00

$7,810.00

SINKING FUND AND INTEREST, $4,000.00

NET INCOME, $5,110.00

fo*. .wonn:/ MCUITY ciu

liter

'. Oakland Bank (fonrerly The Oakland Bank of Savings), Twelfth Street and Broadway, Oakland California,
: as paying agent in all transactions connected with these bonds. The interest on the bonds will be payable semi-
y on June IS and December 15, at the main office of The Oakland Bank.

ic bonds are on sale at the BERKELEY COMMERCIAL AND SAVINGS BANK, northeast corner
iter Street and Shattuck Avenue. Berkeley. California.

258

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263

Emma Moffat McLaughlin, A Life in Community Service, an oral
history conducted 1965, 1968, Regional Oral History Office,
University of California, Berkeley, 1970, pp. x-xxi of the
Interview History, by interviewer Helene Maxwell Brewer.

********************************

I first met Mrs. McLaughlin in 1963, when she was in Berkeley on
what she called her annual vacation -- auditing courses in world
affairs at the University of California Summer Session. Although
we shared several old friends in common, I am sure we would not
have met on that sunny summer afternoon had not Margaret Murdock
of the Women's Faculty Club virtually forced me to speak to her.

Of course, I had long heard of her, and at the Women's Faculty Club
I was frequently told of the San Francisco civic leader who almost
every summer registered for classes and assiduously read the
assignments. As she later observed to me, if one lumped together
the summers she had spent at Mills College and at Berkeley, one would
see that she had the longest sustained record of summer schooling of
any University of California alumna. Compared with that extended
beadroll, my own annual visits were too trifling to mention, for I
had been returning to my native state only since 1957. I always
stayed at the Women's Faculty Club and went every day to the Bancroft
Library, where I read in the collections connected with the Progressive
period and Progressive Party in California. Every summer Miss
Murdock regularly urged me to introduce myself to Mrs. McLaughlin;
she was certain that if Mrs. McLaughlin would talk to me, my research
would be notably enriched.

But I never followed this sensible suggestion because (and I am
ashamed to admit it) I was intimidated. I remember particularly

*Margaret Murdock: daughter of Charles Murdock, the San Francisco
printer, man of letters, reformer, and staunch Unitarian. Miss Murdock
graduated from the University and for m^ny years has been associated
with the University in various capacities.

xi
264

the occasions when Mrs. McLaughlin came for dinner with her old
friend Dean Mary B. Davidson (always "Bobby" when Mrs. McLaughlin
spoke of her) . She walked into the dining room with a rather slow
and measured step and while she traversed the room and after she was
seated, half the dining room seemed to leave its collective seat and
dart over to speak to her. Invariably several of the University's
ancient and honorable arrived for their own dinners, and they too
seemed to find it necessary to circle her table and stop and chat
before they sat down to their own soup. There was always a great
deal of laughter and banter and conversation over in that corner.
I used to wonder if she didn't leave the table in a state of ravenous
hunger because she had to stop and talk with so many old friends.

On the other hand, if one crossed her path when she was by herself,
she could seem remote and stern to those she didn't know -- partly,
perhaps, because she was abstracted and partly because of her habit
of unsmilingly looking over her glasses to see who was coming. This
long, hard look over the glasses, with the head down and those
clear blue eyes seeming to look through me -- this I found both
unsettling and intimidating; and I was greatly relieved to learn that
other friends had been similarly affected. How mistaken we all were!

So my avoidance of Mrs. McLaughlin went on for about three years, until
one morning in August 1963 when Miss Murdock cornered me: Mrs. McLaughl
she reported, would be staying at the Women's Faculty Club; she (Miss
Murdock) had previously asked me to go and see Mrs. McLaughlin, and I
had not done so; now she (Miss Murdock) had told Mrs. McLaughlin that
I wanted to ask her some questions; Mrs. McLaughlin doubted that she
had much helpful information, but I must go and introduce myself. In
a hangdog way I promised to do so, but I had an inkling that I was not
going to make a point of pounding on Mrs. McLaughlin 's door.

About a week later I came back to the Women's Faculty Club for a very
late lunch -- one of those scattered, last minute forays where one
dashed into the empty dining room and, while the student help cleared
the other tables, gobbled as fast as possible a plateful of assorted
leftovers. As I was standing at the serving table contemplating the
tepid possibilities a second latecomer walked in, picked up a plate, am
silently stood behind me; and I, hastily looking over my shoulder,
nearly dropped my butter plate as I saw that I was hedged in by strawbei
jello salad on one side and Mrs. McLaughlin on the other and that in
that constricted space I could not cravenly scuttle away. Undoubtedly
I stuttered some inconsequential inanity because Mrs. McLaughlin looked
at me not through her glasses but over them, at the same time saying,
"Yesss?" and giving an impression of such remarkable sterness that I
squeaked, "Margaret Murdock said that I should ask you . . . ." This
trailing-away sentence I never did complete because Mrs. McLaughlin
smiled, looked at me through her glasses (oh, the dramatic change!)
and with charming directness replied, "So it's you! Why of course!
I've been expecting you. I don't know how much I can help because at
that time I didn't know many of those people. But let's talk."

Xll

265

So we sat down and as we ate we talked, and after a while the manager
asked us if we'd mind moving because the dining room had been closed.
We moved out to the porch where the sunshine was pouring down, and
there we sat looking down on the "Old Berkeley" garden -- the fuchsias,
the acanthus, the roses in profusion, the green lawn, the hedge, and
the scent of bay leaves, somehow mixed up in all of it while Mrs.
McLaughlin reminisced about her growing up in San Francisco and Nevada
in the "80s and '90s, and about William Kent and Hiram Johnson and
briefly about Chester Rowell, each of us deeply absorbed. Suddenly
we heard the chimes striking four and she exclaimed that she was forty
minutes late for an engagement. When we said a rushed goodbye she
remarked that it was unlikely that she would be back the next day, but
we would surely meet later in the week.

The next morning I was in the breakfastroom foggily contemplating the
San Francisco Chronicle with one eye and a cup of coffee with the other,
when in walked Mrs. McLaughlin. She had eaten breakfast (I learned
that she always woke up at six o'clock and listened to a summary
world events on her radio) but she wanted to tell me that after she
had left me on the previous afternoon she had remembered something she
wanted to tell me and that she would come back to the Club for lunch
that noon. By the next morning I had permanently changed my breakfast
hour from the last to the first shift. Thus began a habit that
flourished over the next few summers -- that is, of meeting for meals
when she was free. In 1965 we moved our Thursday lunches to the patio
of the Golden Bear so that Mrs. McLaughlin could listen to the student
speakers in Sproul Plaza. She usually disagreed but she felt that she
should hear them.

At first glance Mrs. McLaughlin seemed tall; actually, she was slightly
shorter than I (five feet six inches). When I first met her she was,
in her early 80s, slightly stooped and when she walked with her hands
clasped behind her she had rather a contemplative appearance. I have
already mentioned her steady walk -- steady in more ways than one so
that she walked from one end of the campus almost to the other if
the classes she audited were so placed. She had clear blue eyes that
could turn hard blue if she happened to talk about something that
displeased her, and I remember thinking how on the days when she was
feeling well, the pinkness of her skin was unusual for anyone of her
years -- that and her carefully dressed white hair and her rose-colored
fingernails. Particularly in those first years of our friendship she
seemed to emanate something like indestructable energy -- a misleading
impression as I found out; for although she only occasionally spoke of
her health she was not entirely well and in the next years she visibly
grew frailer. But even when she was feeling her most miserable, an
adamant quality asserted itself, conveying the impression that if
she could help it, she would not give in. On two of these occasions I
remember going down to Oakland to wait with her until the San Francisco
bus came. My own feeling was that she shouldn't be alone on the bus,
even from Oakland to the city; but she would have none of this and
refused to let me go any farther as she climbed on that city-bound bus.

266

Perhaps in part this impression of extraordinary energy that I have ju;
mentioned resulted from her direct and emphatic manner of speaking,
particularly about something or someone who aroused her indignation.
Her outspoken indignation was one of her many beguiling qualities,
although I shouldn't have thought so had I been the target of that
articulate displeasure: "And I said to him, 'You can't do that! That
not honest I '"

For me Mrs. McLaughlin stood distinguished by the forcefulness of her
convictions, by her honesty, by her kindness, and by her unvarnished
detestation of double-talk and disingenuousness . It is only fair to
observe that her forcefulness was not at all times universally admired,

The obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned her serene
beauty. Serene she could be; benevolent she could be, and wonderfully
kind and ordered and succinct; but to mention these qualities alone anc
to forget her wonderful ability for indignation is to oversimplify her :
and thereby lose much of her complex magnetism and effectiveness. Not
infrequently she used that explosive quality to create an unexpectedly
comic effect, for she told a story unusually well at best with a
sense of dramatic incident and a keen sense of timing. Her friends
will remember her account of her last meeting with Garret McEnerney;
or of the numerous tribulations when she presided over the luncheon foi
Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians. Years later when she told me about
it she concluded: "I came home, went into the kitchen, sat down, took
off my shoes and said, 'I hate women. 1 "

Another quality that I admired was her ability to make decisions and tc
stick by them. This point of view she tersely summed up in a letter
she sent me in 1965, when I was nominated as a Fulbright Visiting
Lecturer to Japan but did not know if I could go. Mrs. McLaughlin
wrote: "Now you must make a plan so that you can leave your problems.

"I will say to you just what I said to a friend in a similarly difficu!
choice -- 'Be convinced that your decision is right and be prepared to
face any consequences.'" From her descriptions of some of her exper
iences when she was active in San Francisco civic life, I am certain
that when she felt she had to, she followed her own precept.

By the time we met she was no longer driving that green Cadillac for
which she was evidently famous and feared. In fact, a number of persoi
have indicated to me that it was a great day for the general traffic
safety of San Francisco, and for the equinimity of her friends when
she relinquished the wheel of that fearsome automobile and relied on
the Yellow Cab Company. From all reports she was a terrible driver.
According to one reliable passenger she often ignored red lights and
the restrictions of traffic laws, seeming not to care whether she was
on the right or the left-hand side of the road or when U-turns might
be made. A friend who survived one of these excursions still gasps an
rolls her eyes when she describes a ride from 2200 College Avenue to
Oakland, with Mrs. McLaughlin forcing the car forward regardless of

xiv
267

red traffic signals, impeding automobiles, and hastily scattering
pedestrians; this same passenger is not at all amused when I remark,
"But Mrs. Mclaughlin was merely following her own injunction:
'Be convinced that your decision is right and be prepared to face
any consequences." 1

No description would be complete without a mention of her enjoyment
of people. I am not certain of all the components that comprised
that quality, but I do know that to her friends she conveyed a quick
responsiveness that made her friends, old and new, feel that they
were individually and genuinely important to her. Frances Cahn, who
went to Miss Burke *s School with Jean McLaughlin and who lived a few
doors from 3575 Clay Street, remembers how when she was growing up,
Mrs. McLaughlin would talk to her about her youthful problems, always
giving those conversations the serious attention she gave to her own
contemporaries .

One way she made her friends, old and new, feel that they were each
important to her was illustrated in her Christmas cards. I have no
idea of how many she sent out, but my guess is that they numbered
several hundred and many of them contained personal messages. Some
times she wrote that at Christmas she liked to review the year,
"counting my blessings"; then she explained why she was sending that
particular card. Obviously, each of these messages was specially
composed and I am certain that the young and the old who received
these greetings and saw themselves catalogued as "blessings" must
have felt distinguished and proud.

When Mrs. McLaughlin stayed at the Women's Faculty Club in the
summers she almost always wore a blue and white silk print dress or
a dark silk of some kind; a white sweater; and, when she went out, a
navy blue coat. This near-uniform was topped by a close-fitting,
rimless black straw hat trimmed with blue velvet bows, the blue
harmonizing with her eyes. One morning I unexpectedly met her as
she was coming downstairs -- this time not carrying her notebook and
not wearing her habitual classroom garb, wearing a toque composed of
small, soft-reddish velvet and silk rosebuds and a fashionable
looking silk print dress that matched the silk and velvet hat.
"Oh," I blurted, "don't you look beautiful!" "No, I don't," she
replied, "but I'm going to a luncheon in the city and I can't wear
my college clothes to that . " I still smile when I think of Mrs.
McLaughlin and her durable college clothes, contrasted with Mrs.
McLaughlin in the soft reds and light blues I afterwards saw when she
was home in San Francisco.

Every summer -- I think it was in early August -- she left world
affairs and returned to Clay Street for several days so that she
could put up raspberry jam. This was an annual rite and Mrs. McLaughlin
was openly and unabashedly proud of it, sometimes bringing a sample
of the handiwork back to Berkeley, where it quickly disappeared.

268

One of her greatest prides was the honorary doctorate she received
from the University of California. She adored the University. She
adored its achievements and its greatness. When she talked about it
she conveyed her sense that she was talking about a living, breathing
thing of grandeur; that during her lifetime she had seen it grow fron
a small college into something almost universal -- a place whose
magnitude transcended the limits of the state of California and
reached out to enlighten and improve the world. I used to think
that for her the University represented not only old friends and
her inner life and growth, but that it also stood for the unpredic-
tably numerous ways in which mankind could be improved. Several time
when she told me about a University occasion -- Charter Day, for
example, when she marched in the procession -- she added, "I didn't
really feel like making the trip over here, but I put on my regiment;
and marched and was glad I did."

H.B.: "But if you didn't feel like it, why did you go?"

Mrs. McLaughlin: (Opening her eyes wide) "Why? Why, it was my

responsibility. They gave me this degree, you knov

In the early time of our acquaintance our conversations were largely
limited to the Progressive period and the development of the Progress
Party in California. This was because I was writing about the turbul
and somewhat abrasive Francis J. Heney, particularly about his politi
fortunes and misfortunes after 1910. Although as she told me she hac
been neither a Progressive nor politically active at this time, she
had known many of the San Francisco group close to Hiram Johnson,
particularly in the years of his governorship; and she recalled
events with gusto, for she could tell a story vividly and with a
marked sense of dramatic insight. What struck me forcefully that fii
afternoon was her clear distinction between hearsay and what she hers
knew at firsthand. When she was uncertain of a point, she told me; '<.
she had an impressively clear sense of exactly what her part was in
an undertaking, as against the parts played by her associates -- an
ability sometimes lacking when one recollects the long-ago past.

As our friendship grew she realized that she could trust me not to
repeat details she told me in confidence; after that she often gave
me what might be called "background briefings." These were really
the highlights of her recollections, the social backgrounds, the edu
cations, the families (particularly the wives), the personal eccp-.-
tricities, the limitations, and often the hopes and frustrations of
some of the men we discussed. Often I would bring back from the
Bancroft Library a list of names of minor, hardworking men I could
only briefly and unsatisfactorily identify. And although she would
insist that she really knew very little about the Progressives of tb
time, she would start to talk and out would come an anecdote or a
connecting link that turned these men from names on a list into livi:
persons .

xvi

269

It was, however, Chester Rowell who cemented our friendship. Several
of us were reading in t he Rowell Papers and Mrs. McLaughlin, who had
immense regard for him, was delighted that his massive collection was
at the Bancroft Library and available for research. I cannot estimate
the number of hours she and I talked about him, his work, and his
contributions to the life of his time. Of all the California Pro
gressives, Rowell was the man for whom she felt the greatest sympathy
and admiration. Her esteem was not primarily because of his career
as a Progressive (an aspect of his life with which she was not
particularly familiar) but because of their common interest in two
vital subjects -- the University of California and the Institute of
Pacific Relations.

Mrs. McLaughlin often spoke of what she termed Rowell 's "quality of
mind." "Of all the leading California Progressives," she said to
me, "I think that Mr. Rowell was the most truly intellectual -- the
one true intellectual." She admired his breadth of knowledge, his
"international mindedness," and his devotion to the University.
I cannot count the times she said, "Even during his lifetime few
people had any idea of the extent to which Mr. Rowell watched over,
worked for, and fought for the University. Its tradition of
intellectual greatness owes a great deal to his concept of what he as
a Regent should do. No one has any idea of the selfless way in which
Mr. Rowell carried out his duties as Regent. His chief aim was to
insure the greatness of the University." Also, since she had known
him best when they were both members of the Institute of Pacific
Relations, she liked to recall those years and his particular contri
butions.

In addition she told me about her youthful life in California and
Nevada; about going to Miss West's School; about her father's meat
packing business; about how she and her sister crossed the Sierra on
horseback; she spoke eloquently of Tahoe , then blue, uncrowded, and
unspoiled, and this often led her to speak with deep feeling and
sensitivity of some of the beautiful, out-of-the-way spots in the
mountains -- spots that no longer exist; and these reminiscences of
course led her to the imperative need for conservation. In logical
sequence she talked about the development of her interest in community
service in San Francisco, about the growth of the state, and about
the unexpected problems that this growth had created. "Our beautiful
state wasn't intended to be home for millions of people. The land
here simply can't support them."

She had a vivid sense of the continuity of California history. As
she frequently reminded me, she had seen profound and basic changes;
she had seen the state change from an agricultural to a largely
industrial society, and the contrast between the past and present
ways of life was a subject she often discussed. For me and I am sure
for many others, she personified the continuity of California history.

270 xvii

Since we were both staying at the Women's Faculty Club, it was only
natural that she should talk at length about her old and much loved
friend, Lucy Ward Stebbins.* The Women's Faculty Club was in large
part created and sustained by Dean Stebbins, and Mrs. McLaughlin
zealously wanted to see the continuation (survival is a better word)
of her friend's dream. However, she feared it was a lost cause;
increasingly she pondered the place and function of a club for
women faculty in a university that seemed less and less to believe
in the need for women faculty. At the same time she was proud of
the club's uniqueness. She enthusiastically asserted its value, and
she often remarked that she hoped and prayed that her forebodings
would prove wrong and that Miss Stebbin's vision would be revitalize!
She was proud of her membership, but she felt that it was a beleague:
institution that somehow had managed to survive in spite of great
obstacles. And if this were the case, then a realistic estimate of
the future was essential. "I do believe in women," she said to me,
"but regardless of this belief, in no case should sentimentality taki
the place of a clearsighted evaluation of the entire question."

In 1964 Dr. Anne Low-Beer was staying at the Club, and the consequeiu
was that our conversational horizons were markedly widened. Mrs.
Low-Beer had for years been active in San Francisco affairs, includii
a term as president of the League of Women Voters (1932-34) . Althouj
much younger than Mrs. McLaughlin, the two had known a number of the
same people and in some cases they were in emphatic and articulate
disagreement. I have often sat open-mouthed while they argued their
differences, neither one convincing the other but always leaving
me with the feelings, "How kind of them to do this for me! It's the
best possible seminar!" Also, Dr. Chiyoko Tokunaga, the geneticist,
was then in residence and Mrs. McLaughlin got much pleasure in
reminiscing with her about Japan as she had seen it before World
War II.

During that same summer, Mrs. McLaughlin characteristcally set about
to enlarge as best she could my acquaintance among the rapidly
dwindling group of men and women who had been active in San Francisc
city affairs before 1914. This could not have been an easy task for
her, I am sure. Typically, she never once gave me a hint of the tim
she spent on this enterprise, but I am certain that considerable
maneuvering was at times required.

For example, she very much wanted me to meet one of Hiram Johnson s
ancient and honorable advisers, a San Franciscan who had been a
close adviser of the governor. In addition to being ancient and
honorable, this gentleman was a busy and unapproachable lawyer. I
am under the impression that he not only informed Mrs. McLaughlin
that he did not wish to cooperate with her generous impulse, but

*Lucy Ward Stebbins: Dean of Women at the University of Califc
1913-1936.

271 xviii

that he volunteered that he had no patience with such damned
foolishness. Characteristically, Mrs. McLaughlin was unimpressed
by his attitude. "He has the reputation of being the rudest man in
San Francisco," she said to me, "but I think I can persuade him."
She did, too.

On another occasion I mentioned a reformer I wanted to meet. She
had excellent reasons for thinking that he was too mentally shaky
for reliable discussion, but, having decided to give him a trial
run without me, she invited him to dinner at 3575 Clay Street. At
eight o'clock the next morning I was called to the telephone:
"My dear, I'm so sorry that he won't be any help to you; he'll be
no help at all. He arrived late for dinner and most of the evening
thought I was Hiram Johnson's secretary and that Hiram Johnson
wanted him to write a book!"

In 1965 and 1966 she methodically undertook to discover what manner
of summer visitor stayed at the Women's Faculty Club. She said to
me, "I've known the old-timers at the Club for years, but the summer
school group are a mystery to me, so I'll count on you to introduce
me. I want to find out about their interests and how they feel
about this Club." We were a miscellaneous lot, we summer birds of
passage: one or two of us had come out to read at the Bancroft;
two or three were teaching; three or four were feverishly writing
theses; perhaps a dozen had come to Berkeley for refresher courses;
several were emeriti; and one had evidently come to Berkeley in order
to practice the piano. No matter what we were doing, we were either
rooted in the past or unable to see very far beyond our own special
projects -- that is, all of us except Mrs. McLaughlin who, in her
mid-eighties, encompassed us all and talked to us all about our work,
about the past, the present, and sometimes even the future. I was
often reminded of a remark Dean Stebbins made to a friend of mine:
"Some people are tasters for knowledge, and some people are
thirsters for knowledge. Emma is a thirster."

As I saw her in action, she was most interested and best informed in
foreign affairs, particularly in Asia (she especially admired
Professor Robert A. Scalapino and took his courses whenever she could) ;
politics, national, state and local; history, especially California
history; the condition of the public schools and public libraries;
and public welfare. In 1964 Mrs. McLaughlin went on her first trip
to Europe and after that I thought I detected a new dimension and a
new interest, art. One day while she was enlarging her acquaintance
among the summer visitors, I determined that as of the next morning,
for twenty-four hours I would keep a brief memorandum, unbeknownst
to her, of the various subjects Mrs. McLaughlin encountered and
discussed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

By the time I clattered down to breakfast on that designated day she
was already there, reading the Chronicle and -- reinforced by the six
a.m. radio -- commenting on the news as she turned the pages. A

272

xix

faculty member, a native Calif ornian at least sixteen years her
junior, questioned her recollection of some detail about the shipping
of walnuts, whereupon Mrs. McLaughlin produced such a series of facts
and citations from both her own experience and that of persons of
her immediate acquaintance that the incipient argument was immediate!
disposed of, thoroughly quashed. She and I then talked a little
about California politics and she reminisced about Senator Phelan
and Montalvo.

At lunch she and I talked about developments in the civil rights
movement; this led into the subject of integration, which led us
into a discussion about the Chinese in San Francisco. This led us
briefly into Mainland China. At this point someone in educational
testing sat down, and I soon was listening to an animated discussion
about that. The tester departed, and Mrs. McLaughlin compared the
campus planting in her undergraduate days with the landscaping of
1964 (she obviously had been thinking of this as she had walked to
her classes that morning) , and that led to a description of the
problems Thomas Church had encountered and solved when he landscaped
"my sister's small garden" at 3575 Clay Street.

At dinner she carried on a lengthy discussion with two nuns from
New Jersey on the techniques of teaching science in parochial schools
Also, Dr. Catherine Callaghan (now at Ohio State) had just come in
from the field, where she was collecting material for her Bodega-
Miwok dictionary. Mrs. McLaughlin was always interested in her
progress and in the cooperativeness of her informants, so they talked
about Indians. In addition, Dr. Callaghan's favorite diversion was
a matter of fascination, for she studied judo, and Mrs. McLaughlin
was as much mystified by these techniques as she was interested in
methods of collecting Indian words; her puzzlement about the former
arose from the circumstance that occasionally Dr. Callaghan vigorousl
practised sweeps and falls in a not-too-soundproof bedroom directly
over Mrs. McLaughlin "s bemused head.

Dr. Callaghan having left, Mrs. McLaughlin and I talked briefly
about Anita Whitney and I can't remember in what order -- the
late President Kennedy, Constance Baker Motley, Martin Luther King,
and Malcolm X. *

^Although she did not make these remarks on that particular day,
I quote them because they are characteristic and I have heard them
a number of times:

"A pooling of ignorance is not an educational experience."
(This epigram was made by an old friend.)

"I have always had to reason from what I know."

"Anyone my age has learned to live on different levels of
emotions and spirit; so we go through life."

273 xx

I regret that I made notes like this for only one day. Other
subjects on other days would have included the Southern Pacific in
California politics, the growth of Los Angeles, James Rolph, Friend
W. Richardson, FDR, Aurelia Henry Rinehart, the Institute of Public
Relations, the Public Dance Hall Committee, the San Francisco
Foundation, the war in Viet Nam -- and these are only a very few of
the subjects we discussed.

In keeping with these broad interests, Mrs. McLaughlin belonged to
a luncheon group they called the "Yack Yacks." The function is
self-explanatory. The members included Mrs. Adolph Deutsch, Mrs.
Robert Sproul, Mrs. Mary Hutchinson, Mrs. R. H. Braden, but I
can't remember the full list. They met -- once a month, I think --
for lunch, usually seriatim at a member's house. I have been told
that Mrs. Mclaughlin's luncheons were the culinary points.

Also, I wish I could work in something about the unforgettables ,
the amazing Georgianna Garden -- "George," as Mrs. McLaughlin called
her -- and Emily Huntington.

From September 1966 until July 1968 I was in Japan. From September
1966 until April 22, 1968 (that is the date of the last letter she
sent me), one of my most regular correspondents was Mrs. McLaughlin.
Knowing that I wanted to keep up with American developments, she sent
me newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and letters about recent
events in California. How I relied on her assessments of political
developments, of the state's political leaders, of the student
protests at Berkeley, and her attitude toward the rising black
protests! As soon as I saw the long, thickly filled envelopes, I
knew that shortly I would be reading numerous clippings that she had
torn from the San Francisco morning newspaper, and that in all
probability she had written across one, "Be sure to read all of these."
So informative were Mrs. McLaughlin "s bundles of clippings and her
analyses of what was going on three thousand miles from Tokyo that
visiting professors, wondering what was happening at home, often asked
me, "Have you mail from San Francisco? What does your friend say
about Berkeley?"

Her analyses of events at Berkeley were particularly interesting to
us, and I regret that some of her letters were "borrowed" and never
returned. And her opinions got around, as when someone just arrived
from Taiwan quoted Mrs. McLaughlin to me with impressive authenticity.
(He was quoting the substance of a letter she had written to me.)

Although from the earliest weeks of our acquaintance Mrs. McLaughlin
and I had talked a great deal about the changing emphasis of the
black movement in the United States, I felt that she was understandably
not close to it in the way that she was to the student protest
movement. She, of course, recognized the profound social seriousness
of the situation and the need for a change in the black man's condition,
but probably many blacks would have said that she oversimplified.

XXI

274

As she saw it, one of the fundamental causes for the trouble was
that "the avenues of communication of the affluent society are filled
with urging everyone to have everything of luxury now and pay later.
The younger Negro[es] [replied?] by rioting since they do not have
opportunity for credit cards." Another time she stated her belief
that most blacks wanted "peace and quiet [and] a chance for educatior
and jobs." She regarded the black militants as hotheads, and she
saw them as a grave social problem and was concerned.

The student protests on the other hand, struck an immediately
personal note. I have already remarked that when she was on campus
in 1965 and 1966, we regularly went to the Golden Bear for Thursday
lunch so that she could hear the student speakers. Sometimes she
was horrified, but she sat through to the end. She considered them
"these people who are determined to challenge the "establishment"
and saw them as threats to the order and discipline of the trained
intellect, destructive to the existence of the University she had
lived with, grown with, officiated at, known intimately, and loved.

On April 22, 1968, she sent me a note describing both the aftermath
of Dr. King's assassination and the changes in the political
situation in the United States. Almost casually she added, "I
have a slight illness, but though slight it has incapacitated me,
since it affected my entire anatomy."

Previously she had written that we both must be sure to plan our
respective summers so that we could have time in which to talk over
the past two years; this remark I clung to and I made my plans
accordingly. But it was not to be. As the ship on which I was
homeward bound came into San Pedro Harbor, a tugboat brought out
telegrams and special delivery letters for the passengers, and in
one of them I learned that Mrs. Mclaughlin had died.

30 January 1970
Department of English
Queen's College,
City College of New York
Flushing, New York

Helene Maxwell Brewer
Associate Professor of English

230] 'ACUITY

Faculty Clubi

275

v-
0)

o
M

o
o

c
c

4-1

Faculty Club* are organized on six campuses
to provide social, cultural, and recreational
programs for their members. The newest
clubhouses will be those now under construc
tion on the Davis and Santa Barbara cam
puses.

At Berkeley, the Faculty Club traces its
beginnings to a Dining Association for stu
dents and faculty members formed in 1894.
The association occupied a cottage originally
built in 1873 to house women students. A
mall room was set aside for members of the
faculty.

As students developed a preference for
other eating arrangements, faculty patronage
expanded. By 1901, several faculty members
became seriously interested in forming an
organization exclusively for the faculty. Pro
fessors Irving Stringham, William D. Armes,
Lincoln Hutchinson, Andrew Lawson, Win-
throp John Van Leuven Osterhout, William
A. Setchell, and Henry D. Waite were con
stituted as a committee to draft suggestions.
The committee reported in December, 1901,
urging that a facility clubhouse be built ad
joining the old Dining Association building.
Twenty-two faculty members signed up for
membership and a formal membership meet
ing was held on March 10, 1902. Stringham
was elected as the first president and the club
was named: "Faculty Club of the University
of California." It has never been the men's"
faculty club officially, but the intent has
been understood from the beginning and
women are not admitted to the members' din
ing room, lounge, and recreation areas except,
on special occasions (this despite the fact
that Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who took an
early interest in the club and made it an
object of her philanthropy, was made an
honorary life member in 1902). The fireplace
in the new clubhouse was first lighted at
special ceremonies on September 18, 1902.

The club's quarters were enlarged in 1903
when bachelor members were permitted to
add a two-story addition that would provide
sleeping rooms upstairs and club rooms on
the first floor. They were to be compensated
with rent-free accommodations for ten years.
This addition was made to the west of the
original club. A southern addition was made
in 1904 by Henry Morse Stephens and Mr.
Jerome Landfield under terms similar to those
arranged by other members the year before.
In 1906, the rights of these residents were
bought out by the club using funds acquired
through a bank loan and the issuance of a
$13,000 bond issue. The property and debts
of the old Dining Association were obtained
at the same time and improvements were
made in the kitchen and dining facilities. A
second bond issue for $20,000 in 1914, to
gether with a $1,000 contribution by the
Regents and money obtained through per
sonal loans granted to members of the club's
board of directors, made possible expansion
of the dining rooms to the north, more bed
rooms, a new office, a new kitchen, and living

quarters for personnel. Still further expansion
was made possible by the issuance of a
$5,000 bond issue in 1925.

In 1958, the Regents made both a con
tribution and a loan to finance further im
provement and expansion. This resulted in
the building of more dining accommodations
and meeting rooms, and a change in location
for the office, lounge, and recreation facili
ties. The club now has a modem kitchen,
three large dining rooms, 13 smaller rooms
for luncheon or dinner meetings, 22 rooms
for transient guests, two lounges, a card
room, and a billiard room.

Through the years, the club has served not
only as a center of informal faculty conversa
tion and activities, but also has been the set
ting for evenings of music and other cultural
programs. The most memorable events are
the annual Christinas dinners that feature a
hearty dinner, good wine, singing led by a
"monks choir" and special entertainment
written and performed by members.

In 1966, the club had 1,600 members.

The Women's Faculty Club at Berkeley
was organic in 1919 at a gathering of fac
ulty women and administrators in the office
of Miss Lucy W. Stebbins, dean of women.
An initial membership of 66 was increased to
100 by the nomination of associate members
from among women donors to the University
and professional women of the community.

Early meetings were held in the Forestry
Cottage and an office in Hearst Hall, with
an annual "baaijuet" at ths TVT mH (Vvwn
Club on Dwight Way. After the cottage was
removed and Hearst Hall burned in 1922, a
reserve fund of $10,000 was obtained by the
sale of stock in the club to members, and by
gift. The Regents were then asked for per
mission to build a clubhouse on the campus.
A rite was granted on Strawberry Creek east
of Senior Men's Hall, a bond issue to finance
the building was rapidly bought up, and the
University architect John Galen Howard pre
pared plans. The three-story, brown shingled
building was completed and opened in Octo
ber, 1923. The lower floor, intended for gen-
erp.l use, contains a lounge, library, two din
ing rooms, and a kitchen. The two upper
floors provide private rooms for 25 residents.

The club now has nearly 500 members in
the categories of active, associate, and retired,
formerly active. Its affairs are conducted by
a board of seven directors, elected for two-
year terms, so arranged that three director
ships become vacant each year. A separate
Building Committee of five members, elected
in the same manner as the directors, finances
and cares for such repairs or remodeling as
become necessary. Both groups elect their
own officers.

The Centennial Record

FACULTY WIVES ORGANIZATIONS

On most of the University campuses, faculty
wives have formed organizations, often to
gether with women staff and faculty members,
for the purposes of fellowship and service to
the University community. Their activities
include social gatherings, meetings of special
interest groups, and student services, such as
foreign student aid, hospital visits, loan funds,
and scholarships.

Berkeley: For almost 60 years, faculty wives
on the Berkeley campus have attended the
Cottege Teas for the purpose of becoming
better acquainted. The teas, which originated
in 1907 under the sponsorship of Mrs. Ben
jamin Ide Wheeler, have undergone some
changes through the years, but their purpose
remains the same.

The first year, the College Teas met at the
Men's Faculty Club. The 89 guests attending
the first tea arrived on foot, by carriage, or by
streetcar. The food was prepared by the
members themselves.

For the next 15 years, the first Hearst Gym
nasium for Women was the meeting place for
the organization. When this building was de
stroyed by fire in 1922, the College Teas
treasury was indemnified for its loss of samo
vars, blue china, and embroidered napkins.
This insurance money was turned over to the
Regents of the University for a student loan
fund which is still in existence and which has
been augmented over the years.

In the early years, fathers, brothers, sons,
and husbands of subscribers were invited to
the April tea. This practice was abandoned
in favor of an evening reception to which hus
bands were invited. The teas are now for
women only.

In 1922-23, the teas were held at the Town
and Gown Club. They then moved to their
present location, the Women's Faculty Club.
The members now include women faculty as
well as wives of faculty, administrative, and
research personnel. The chancellor's wife is
president, the University President's wife,
honorary president.

The University of California Section Club
is nearly 40 years old. During its history, this
organization of faculty women and wives has
promoted friendship and provided the fellow
ship of shared interests and hobbies for hun
dreds of women associated with the Berkeley
campus. Organized in 1927 at a meeting :n
the home of the wife of the University Presi
dent, Mrs. W. W. Campbell, the Section Club
has grown from the original 25 members to
over 850 participating in 22 sections. Besides
these interest groups, the club sponsors three
activities whose sole aim is the welfare of stu
dents: foreign student hospitality, ways and
means, and S.O.S. (student aid).

The Foreign Student Committee includes
over 30 women who work to help students
from other countries feel at home in the com
munity. Included in this effort is help with
housing, home hospitality, the lending of
household equipment, and various parties

276

p. 287

and social gatherings including faculty and
students.

Over the years, the Ways and Means Com
mittee of S.O.S. has sponsored various fund
raising activities. Money from these has been
used for the student-oriented activities of the
Section Club.

The Dames Club, an organization of stu
dent wives, is sponsored by the Section Club,
with faculty wives acting as advisors. An
emergency loan fund is maintained for the
use of wives. This provides non-interest bear
ing short-term loans for needy student fam
ilies. Money for play equipment at the nursery
school at Albany Village student housing
project was donated by the Section Club.

Members of the Cowell Hospital Commit
tee of S.O.S. call on students in the hospital
and during registration, serve coffee and
punch to students as they come through the
hospital. In the fall of 1965, more than 7,500
students were served.

Margery Thompson asked Miss
Minard to tell of her role in saving
the Women's Faculty Club building
at the U. of C, Berkeley.

Over and over, when some
thing wonderful has happened, I
realize how important one
individual can be if she will play
her part. My part was a very small
cog, very small.

I was at luncheon one day
with some of the older women at
the Club who had been wanting to
save it, and had worked very hard
to raise money oh, very hard.
They had done everything they
could think of to raise money.
They said, "We can't do one more
thing. We're just exhausted." I felt
sorry for them and I said, "I
haven't done anything. Why can't
I do something?" One of them
said, "Go to it. You have our bless
ing."

"The expense is going to be
enormous," they said. "We've got

277

to have a new furnace, we've got to
have new electrical circuits, and
we've got to have new radiators.
We can't pay for it, we've got to
give it up."

Two dear ladies who lived at
the Club, and were employed on
the Berkeley campus, often had
dinner with me on Friday night.
They talked about their fear for the
Club, that people were giving up.
We formed the idea of a picture
book of the Club. Many of the
beautiful articles of furniture were
given when it was first built in '23
by a group of women who had
been forbidden membership in the
men's club.

Then, I thought perhaps some
of the people who estimated what
was needed by the Club had exag
gerated. So I first asked a plumber
to come and look. He said that the
outside drains had been stopped
up, and that was why water
backed up into the cellar. So, the
people in charge of the basement
were instructed, the drains were
opened, and all was well.

I asked another expert to look
at the clubhouse. This person said,
"Oh, this building is marvellously
supported! Just look at these piers.
The building isn't supported just
by its wall foundations as many
buildings are. These great piers of
stoutest wood probably are very
deep."

The college architect came to
one of the Women's Club meet
ings. Now, he didn't build any
thing. All he did was to look at
designs. So, he came and spoke
about the Club. He said that he had
loved the Women's Faculty Club
for many years, loved it from his
very heart. "But," he said, "we've
got to admit it's a tired old build
ing."

I could have screamed with
joy. He'd said exactly the wrong
thing or the right thing, from
my point of view. After the meet
ing, I went up to him and said,
"There is one point you made I
must disagree with. You said this is

a tired old building. Forty years
old. Do you remember that the
architect was John Galen Howard
and that he grew up in New Eng
land, where there are houses of
timber construction that are still
standing, in perfect condition, over
200 years old?"

Pictures were taken of the
beautiful furnishings, and made
into a portfolio. We had a list of
people who had lived in the Club
in the past, and I offered to send a
letter to them asking if they could
write their happy impressions.
One of the women said, "It won't
do any good. You won't get any
answers."

I tried anyway. I was certain
that we sent 36 letters, each one
hand written. But we got 40 rep
lies! Even from remote places, we
got airplane answers. The letters
were touching, full of remembered
enjoyment. We made a booklet of
those, and a portfolio of those pic
tures, with the names of donors to
the Club listed.

Mills Quarterly, August 1981

WILLIAM C. HANLIY. CITY MANAOIH 278

INSPECTION IRVICIS

CITY OF BERKELEY

644-6550 PLEASE REFER TO

T.u.,HON..SOT INSPECTION SERV.CES DEPARTMENT

AMIA CODI 418 CITY HALL. BERKELEY. CALIFORNIA 947O4

December 14, 1970

Ref: Women's Faculty Club Building

University of California Campus

Miss Florence Minnard
2606 Shasta Road
Berkeley, California 94708

Dear Miss Minnard:

On December 11, 1970, in response to your "request for service" to this de
partment, a complete inspection was made of the above-referenced building
relative to the structural conditions and to the conformity with the Uniform
Building Code, as well as with the Housing Code, City of Berkeley. The
following was noted:

The structure appears to be approximately 45 years old. There are two floors
used for private sleeping rooms; one floor used for living rooms, dining
rooms, and kitchen area with full cooking facilities. There is also a full
basement.

The building is Type VN construction with no fire rating. The exterior wall
covering is wood shingles over wood wall sheathing. The wall area on the
basement, where exposed, is stucco over wood sheathing. (The balance of
these walls are concrete retaining walls in good condition.) The interior
walls of the living area are of lath and plaster, which appear to be in good
condition. The walls and ceiling of the basement are unprotected joists,
studs, columns and beams.

Access was gained to approximately 80 per cent of the private room area
(sleeping rooms), 100 per cent of the main floor, 100 per cent of the basement
area and the attic area.

In checking the basement area, it is our feeling that because of its arrange
ment, it need not be considered as another story. This would, in effect,
make it a tliree- story building.

Inspection of the interior revealed the following:

1. Walls and ceilings are of lath and plaster in good condition (no
fire protection).

2. Four means of egress was available from all floors. These con
sisted of two fire escapes in good operating condition and two
sets of stairs. Fire doors (1 3/8" thick, metal clad) was

279

Miss Florence Minnard -2- December 14, 1970

installed on each floor to the stairways. These were double
acting doors with wire glass panels. During the course of
inspection, some of these doors were found to be propped open
by the use of rubber wedges.

3. All private rooms (sleeping) were checked for size, light, venti
lation, electrical requirements, and sanitary facilities,
including plumbing. A thorough check was made to determine any
possible structural defects or signs of structural failure.

The basement was checked for the following: the structural
conditions; also, the condition of the plumbing, heating and
electrical systems.

The exterior was checked for structural conditions.

The following are our findings along with our recommendations:

a. The Uniform Building Code does not permit a non-fire
rated building, three stories in height, to Ve used
as an "H" occupancy (living purposes, apartment,
hotel, etc.). The Code requires such a building to
be- not less than one-hour fire restrictive throughout.
This may be accomplished by the installation of 1/2"
gypsum board over all interior walls (existing plaster
will be accepted as part of the fire assembly), plus
7/8" stucco on the exterior. A minimum of 5/8" gypsum
board (approved fire-rated) would be required on the
walls and ceiling of the basement area.

in lieu of the above, a complete approved sprinkler
system would be acceptable. This would include all
floors, the basement and the attic.

Found all rooms (private) to conform to the Housing
Code, City of Berkeley in the following manner:

(1) size, (2) light and ventilation, (3) sanitary
facilities and plumbing, (4) electrical and
(5) heating.

A check of the walls anu ceilings revealed no indication
of any structural failure. There were some hair line
cracks noted. These were neither large nor numerous
enough to suggest structural distress.

On the main floor we found adequate light and venti
lation. It was noted that the exit from the living
room area was controlled by sliding doors. These are

280

Miss Florence Minnard -3- December 14, 1970

not acceptable as a means of egress. It is suggested
these be replaced with approved swinging doors.

In the dining room it was noted the second means of
egress was blocked with table and chairs. It is recom
mended these be removed and that direct access to this
exit be available at all times.

e. Some electrical extension cords were noted in Rooms

No. 208 and No. 312. These should be kept to a minimum
or if possible, removed entirely. Also found the cover
plate missing from an electrical wall outlet in Room
No. 203. This should be replaced at once.

f. Double acting doors in the stair enclosure does not pro
vide the fire protection intended. These doors should
be made to operate in one direction (and/or in the
direction of egress). Also, each door should be provided
with an approved self-closing device and an approved
latching device. These doors should be kept in a
"closed" position at all times.

g. In checking the exterior, it was found that a shingle
here and there (very few) were missing. These should
be replaced as soon as possible. The exterior does not
at this time show any signs of deterioration. The

4* ferts.*.J 4^ exterior surface, however, is in need of a protective
^>r, "fcj" covering. This should be taken care of in the not too

distant future.

h. In checking the basement, it was noted that the plumbing,
heating and the electrical systems were in good condition.
Some new electrical work has been installed recently,
which appears to conform to the Electrical Code. There
appeared to be no signs of structural damage or failure.

Our conclusion is the building, except for the items mentioned, is in sound
structural condition.

Respectfully submitted,

J01.N/S. ATKINS, DIRECTOR
INSPECTION SERVICES DEPARTMENT

Howard J. Mard
HJM:hf

Building / lnspector

281

THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . BERKELEY . CALIFORNIA 94720

January 5, 1971

To every Voting Member

of The Y/omens Faculty Club

Re: "Ballot"

In the "proposition" issued recently by the Board of Directors in
regard to the discontinuance of the V; Y C as such, there appear several
statements of rather serious mis-information and mis-statement.

Section 1, lines 1--3, ctatc: "The '..' F C, according to studios madn by
the Canpus Architect, requires repairs and renovation in the aiuount of
approximately 0340,000 to bring it to acceptable standard of continuing
operation. "

These items as listed in the Architects and Engineers File No. 41-X242,
originated., NOT by a study made by the campus architect, but by a survey
of the building by the then-chairaan of the Building Committee of the
YJ F C together vdth a member of the architect's staff. This was made at
the time (196?) when it was planned to raise 080,000, the Regents to lend
us 020,000 and a gift from the Regents of 080,000. Many of thcso items are
desirable, but, aside from the fire protection, none are in any way
necessary to the operation of the clubhouse.

These items were never formally presented to the Board of Directors of
the V.' F C, nor v/ere they ever formally approved by them.

Among other itews, the list includes:

Remodeling or adding closet space in each room

Various partitions, dividing of larger roons, etc.

Remodeling bath rooms, including ceramic tile around tubs

Remo^deling kitchenettes

Remodel old office for refreshment lounge

Replace all steam radiators vdth new wall-fin convcctors

Replace aTT bath room fixtures with new

Add new bath rooms, lavoratorics and toilet rooms

Provide new lighting fixtures throughout

Provide telephone and TV outlet for each room

Provide aaster TV antenna on roof

As far as can be ascertained, this list was not revised when the loon was
no longer possible. As of Aur.ust 7 1967 > the architect's office
estimated the cost at 0240,000; the present cost, as of lUirch 1, 1971,
at 0344,500.

Does the failure to provide these luxury items then offer the only
alternative of uusving into one rooa in the r:en's club ?

282
To every voting member of the V/ F C - continued -2-

The last sentence of Section I states that "the income of the V/ F C
has never been sufficient to permit the accumulation of a reserve for
maintenance and repair ...."

This shows an utter lack of research into the history of the building i
In 1950, the Building Committee had savings of more than 010,000 in the
bank. A portion of this was used to re-cover the roof with fire-resista
shingles; to replace window sills along the south face of the building;
to remove vines which were damaging the outside v;alls; to replace damage
shingles and to re-stain and paint the trim over the entire building.

Later in the same decade, funds had again accumulated and the kitchen
was entirely reniodeled; fire doors were placed at the heads of stairways
leading to the residence floors and new furniture v/as placed in some of
the rooms. In 19>7.> the cost of renovating the dining room was met by
some L1,000, again from funds of the T/ F C Building Committee.

At the present time, although v;e are rapidly recovering, it has not be
possible to accumulate a reserve for Maintenance, due to losses caused b;
unfortunate management in the last two years.

It has been stated with much repetition that we have a "tired old
building". Since no review was made of the so-called "necessary" items,
nor was any outside contractor consulted to give an impartial opinion
on the condition of the building, vie secured, and paid for, the services
of the Building Inspector of the City of Berkeley. In his report, (attacl
he states that ho considers the building to be "in good structural
condition".

In speaking of the two clubs, the Board of Directors has used three
different terms:

First paragraph, second line
. .. The two Faculty Clubs combined

Item 6, last line
... The amalgamation of the two clubs

Item 3, first line
.,The Joint Committee on Merger of the Faculty Clubs

While these three terms may be synonymous in literature, they do not
have the same meaning when applied to a corporation. V/hich arc we
voting for ?

Also, can the Board of Directors of a corporation ask for a vote "in
principle" ? This, in zvality, constitutes asking for a "yes" vote from
two points of view. And in v;hat manner can any Board of Directors of
any corvorr.tirn "i*"lf :irr" a building or any of the cor:x>ration'r; ca: it.il
assets v/iti.out a doi'ijUwC statement 01* the fom of release, such as
sale, rental or gift ?

To every voting member "of the \i F C - continued -3

283

We disagree with the last three lines of Section 3 that "establishment
of a lounge area .... v/ill preserve the atmosphere of the V.' F C> etc..."
The Club was founded to be of help in problems of education, not only of
the women on the campus, but of visiting faculty, and of foreign and
graduate students. To remove the possibility of furnishing living
quarters by substituting "transient living accomodations " and a mere
social lounge seems to destroy the very purpose which the Club has
carried on for nearly half a century.

. ,- . ,

Lucille Czamowski

? ilay Dornin

Joi f ) ( (' i^' "''.I Jifl '> c^.

Florence L

ttu/. / /L L<; <.(('!

Harriet Nicewonger

Elizabeth Scott

Josephine . Smith

Dear Members:

284

THE WOMEN'S FACUL1T CLUB, EIC.

February.. .23

Because so many of you have raised questions which have not had satis
factory answers, we have prepared a summary of the activities of the various
committees which, since 1966, have been involved in reviewing the problems
of the Men's and Woman's Faculty Clubs to determine whether or not there
could be a joint solution.

I am sorry those of you who wrote us after the December, 1970 meeting
were not answers' 1 personally] this is one of the problems of a volunteer
board; I apologize. If this summary docs net answer all of ycur questions,
please do net hesitate to ask for additional information, or perhaps it
mi^ht be more satisfatery for you to read, the minutes of the various committees
from which this summary was compiled. They arc on file in the club office,,

In 1966, a committee composed of members of the Beard of Directors of
the T'JFG went to the Chancellor to ask whether or not it were possible for the
University to provide- a subsidy for the dining room of the WFC. As you all
know, this has over the years, presented us with a financial problem and. the
deficit has been supported by the dues of the members. This request led to
the appoinrncnt by the Chancellor of a special committee, which came to be
known as the Ad Hoc Committee, to study the Men's Faculty Club and the
Women's Faculty Club, This committee continued to function with occasional
changes in membership, until June, 1970, when it was disbanded. Upon recom
mendation of tht. Ad Eoc committre a special committee was appointed in
April. This committee v.s composed of three members each from the B cards
of Directors of both clubs to make proposals to the memberships for a possible
combination of the two clubs in one facility.

Also in 1967 it was agreed that the Building Committee of the WFC, which 7
was a corporation, and the WFC, which was an association should be combined
into one corporate structure. In addition, in 1967, the Building Committee
decided to present a proposal to the Chancellor for a project to redo the
entire WFC with t'<-e plan that the club members raise '80,000, that the
Regents give (80,000, and also loan ''.80,000 to the club to pay for the esti
mated cost of the changes proposed by the Buildinp Committre Chairman and
the representative cf the Architects and Engineers Office.

The items covered in this estimate were these listed in the letter which
was sent to the voting members over the five signatures at the time that the
proposal was sent cut this January by the Board cf Directors. This would.
have involved a complete refurbishing and redoing of the club house -
changes . of the bedrooms, adding of bathrooms, .-md extensive, redecoration
(the estimate of ;"2LO,000, which was made in 1967, is the item mentioned at
the December meeting which is now, vrith the rising costs, estimated at
v 350, 000.) So the T '-TC started simultaneously to discuss in the Ad Hoc com
mittee to study the problems cf the two clubs while carrying on at the same
time the project to raise nonoy for a complete renovation of the WFC house.

The Chancellor agreed to the WFC proposal for a fund, raising campaign and

285
-2-

also on the proposal tc the Regents for a gift ?nd lo.in, with the under
standing that the WFC money raising project wculd not conflict with the
Urivr.rL-ity's Centennial fund raising, which went en in 196? and 1968. During
the rcrcb two years, a grc?.t mcny members of the club participated 1 in fund
raising and i n pol?.citin<* funds from the members and othr rs, and a great deal
cf tine and energy vent into these enterprises. Unfcrunately from all these
efforts, only '3?;. COO was raised, of which .*11,000 cone from the Building
CcTOU.toe-c. Approximately '11,000 was spent on the renovation of the dining
rc-c-n in 1968 and roughly f 10, 000 on repairs tc the kitchen from donation
furds . There is new, the Treasurer reports, approximately 'ITjOOO left in
this fnnd. exclusive of ? 1,000 in unfulfilled pledges.

part cf this period, we had a very efficient food service manager,
vho r -L<*. net live in the building. She was bothered by the maintenance on the
ba:l'..d.i:^g, and complained steadily about leaks in our "old building." Ker
mi/ 1 , interest was in the dining room where she did an excellent job. In
September of 1968, we employed another manager who worked very hard, tc give
us ~ccd food, but who, unfortunately, incurred continuous loss over a period
cf tine cf arcund fiO ; 000. In the spring of 1970 he left because of illness.
Since then we have had managers who have managed to keep us in the black, so
that cur current financial records indicate that we have been steadily
operating in the blacx r.nr even accumulating a modest surplus.

By the end of 19^9, it seemed quite cloar rhst not only could the club
ncnbcrs net raise the f 80,000 but because cf the budgetary situation, the
gi r t Ttf 1 lean would be difficult tc obtain. Thus the project of redoing the
club house wns given up, The Ad Kec Committee which had continued to meet
during this period, focused then its attention to the proposed combination
of th.- two clubs.

During the activities cf the Ad Hoc Committee, a professional food serv
ice person was employer' a.r.c 1 paid for by the Office of the Chancellor to
examine the two food services. Out cf this examination came the proposal
that the MFC should hire Manning and many changes were made in the VJFC be
cause of the suggestions made by the consultant. I wrote you a letter after
the. annual meeting in 1970, giving you some of the committee findings,
although from seme- cf the questions at thr annual meeting, it appeared I
didn't give er.cugh infcrmaticn. The idea of redoing the WFC clubhouse was
given up for the combination of the two clubs, under one facility. The
Ad Hoc Committee tried to include in their deliberations anything which was
suggested by any member as a possible proposal. It is .understandable that
all cf the members who have served, en the Ad Hoc in the last 3* years feel
that they have wcrkcd hard, and it is unfortunate that so many of our
members feel that they have net had complete *nd full informaticn on the
deliberations.

At the moment the best estimate which it is possible for us to get of
the things which need to be done in the clubhouse (not all the desirable
ones) is somewhere between f60,000 to f85,000. This estimate inilud.c the
sprinkler system, termite repairs, seme repairs in the electrical system
(in adcitirn to those which were already made) and some repairs in the
heating and plumbing systems which still present us with problems.

At the annual meeting the members voted for a committee cf five to
prepare a proposal for a combination agreeable to both clubs, using the nen's
club house as the main clubhouse, but retaining the WFC for multi-use. (The
latter was included in a proposal by the Prytanean Alumnae, Inc.) The multi-use
'ight include a Center for continuing educational needs of

-3- 286

women, as well ?.s scrno cf the activities rf the T -TC. The committee cf
fiv. has beer apocinted nr.d bos already had one meeting, and is planning
tc meet cv.-:ry week,

The committee members are:

Elizabrth Sect-

Margaret Uric 1 go
Katherinc Staufi'er

Mary Ann Johnson

Ruth N v Donnelly, chairman

Any cf the ccnnittrc members would welcome any suggestions that you
have to add tc their delibcratirns e

The ccmmittr.e cf three tc work with the Prytancan Alumnae rn their
prcpcs?.! h'is a? members:

May Dcrnin

Grace Reincman

Rirrictte ITiccwcnger

These two ccmrnittces will prepare proposals promptly which can be sent
tc you fcr yrur consideration and vote.

I have every hope that with the help cf all members, we will be able
tc arrive at a happy sciutirn tc cur m?ny problems, It is cur great desire
tc have all of ycu participate with any suggestions; ^nd I urge you tc
give then tc the members cf either cf these committees.

Sincerely yours,

Mary Leu Norrie

President

Board cf Directors

Women's Faculty Club

287
WALTER A. HAAS

96 BATTERY STREET
SAN FRANCISCO

October 21, 1971

*"'"' .
r :;.;. v

Chancellor Albert H. Bowker
200 California Hall
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

Dear Chancellor Bowker:

This letter formally authorizes the Berkeley Campus to
expend up to $600,000 of fund previously pledged (see
Peter Haas 1 letter of March 21, 1968) and donated to the
Berkeley Centennial Fund by the "Levi Strauss Associates"
for the purpose of renovating ($400,000) and expanding
($200,000) the Faculty Club in accordance with descriptions
previously submitted to Levi Strauss Associates and approved
by The Regents of the University of California.

Sincerely,

Walter A. Haas

for
Levi Strauss Associates

288

PROFESSOR JOSEPH GARBARIKO:

Re: Faculty Club Proposals

Attached are the three proposals which were submitted to the. donors
to secure their allocation of funds previously- contributed to thu
Berkeley Centennial Fund. Please note that the two projects totaling
$600,000 for the Faculty Club remodeling and addition were accepted
and approved by the donors, but the Women's Education Center proposal"
was not accepted and approved.

The Regents' action in May permitted us to seek a final agreement froa
the donors to these plans; and in the fall of 1971, a letter of authori
zation was finally consumated.

Chancellor Heyns, in his transmittal letter, said to the donors, "I
think there is a wonderful kind of logic to having the major focus of
the gift be the improvement of the faculty club and facility, and hope
you do too. The Haas family is already identified with an extra
ordinary gift to student life. Now comes a generous contribution to
the life of the faculty. It comes right after a recent national
tribute to the faculty's distinction and will be another enormous boost
to faculty morale."

A final word: While we attempted to be as specific as possible in the
proposal drafting, we said verbally to the Haas family that there may
be some minor changes in the project elements as we moved f orward with
more specific planning and as the Men's and Women's Faculty Clubs had
a chance to absorb the impact of this most generous gift. While minor
changes could be ma.de, any major revision would certainly have ro be
discussed with the donors so they can be assured that their objective
of aiding and supporting the faculty would be achieved.

I hope these items will be helpful and will "expedite the development
of this project.

Joseph R. Mixer

Special Assistant

to the Chancellor

JRM:jas

Attachments: Proposals (3)

bcc: Vice Chancellor Campbell

UNIVKKSITY OF CAUFOIINIA (LfMtrhfd for interdc-prtmcntl UM)

University Club for the Derkelcy^gwipus

289

For decades the Berkeley Campus of the University of California has struggled,
against tlu: odds of great size, to maintain some sense of community. The
Berkeley Campus is at once spectacular in appearance and yet so physically
diffuse as to impair an easy association by members of the University community.

The faculty is unquestionably the central ingredient in the greatness of this insti
tution. Thoir unselfish efforts and commitment to the University of California,
often through turbulent times, liavc ad.cted immeasurably to the knowledge and
well-being of humankind.

We now propose that $-100,000 be allocated for the purpose of extensively remodel
ing and redecorating the Men's Faculty Club and to facilitate, thereby, the creation
of a single University Club to serve both faculty and staff. This proposal antici
pates that the Men's Faculty Club and ths Women's Faculty Club will soon conclude
a merger agreement. (Negotiations are now well along.) The conversion of the
Men's Faculty Clubhouse into a University Club would accomplish several highly
important purposes. First and foremost, it would provide the campus community --
and especially the faculty --with a handsome setting for meeting and dining together.
The symbolic value of the gift to the faculty for this purpose fan exceeds the actual
cost involved. Second, this gift will make available considerable space now occupied
by the Women's Faculty Club for other much-needed uses by women on the campus.

The kinds of renovation and refurbishing that have been suggested by the Campus
Architect, in consultation with a faculty committee, are described as follows:

A handsome bridge or ramp would be constructed from ground level at the south of
the Clubhouse to the d?ck now adjoining the second floor reading room. This in ef
fect will create a dramatic new main entrance to the Club. The present reading
room would be developed into a new loungo with new furnishings, flooring, wall
finishes, lighting, and the necessary repairs. The deck, rails, and doors outside
the new lounge would be renovated. The "Buck Suite" and other bedrooms would bs
converted into a sitting room, men's and women's toilets and powder room. Office
space would be enlarged.

New lighting would be installed throughout the Club. All new furnishings would be
provided for the Club. Parking space is badly deficient at present, so additional
parking would be provided as well as adequately lighted paths to the new entrance
and appropriate landscaping. Outdoor dining space would be enlarged. A food ser
vice line would be installed. All fees for building and furniture, plans, specifications,
inspection, and other costs would be included.

In sum, the Men's Faculty Clubhouse, a structurally sound and distinguished work of
architecture, would be redeemed through the generosity of tlic Haas family and trans
formed into an elegant center for the University community.

4/22/71

290
Women's Education Center

Background: The emerging status of women in our society and their needs for higher
education require new means of access to and completion of advanced study and
training. The impact of technology on the labor force and horocmaking responsibil-
lics and related changes in family life have freed women for fuller use of their
intellectual abilities and productive capacities. However, the educational process
of women terminates or is interrupted at various junctures tliroughout their lives,
but by no means is the need lessened for completion of their education. Recently,
national studies have pointed out the desirability for some men and women to inter
rupt their education and then continue it in acceptable and recognized programs.
Many women enter or re-enter their careers at a period later in their lives than do
most men; consequently, they come to the University with a great deal more maturit;
but with less understanding and knowledge about how they can complete their cducatic
and use their knowledge in the working world.

Proposal: A Women's Education Center is proposed for the Berkeley campus to meet
the diverse and special reeds of more mature women who wish to enter the Umversit
initially or who seek to continue their education through one or more of its various
avenues. The W.E.C. would have the following functions: ,

A. Guidance: The Center would offer guidance to women through available library
resources on career and educational opportunities, staff and volunteers and
other devices which could be selected by the applicants to meet their needs for
information and direction.

B. Facilitation: The Center would assist women applicants to secure entrance to the
University or obtain the necessary preparation for eventual entrance to the
University, and to help facilitate their obtaining the necessary credits for past
experience which might be just as valid but not conforming exactly to University
rubs and regulations. It would seek intelligent and humane applic. Lion of
University rules and procedures to meet the changing conditions as posed by mo]
mature women .

C. Research: The Center would encourage, coordinate and sometimes undertake
. specific research activities dealing with women's continuing education and its

application. In the initial stages the emphasis would be on stimulating research
by other agencies and units of the University and the surrounding community.

D. Communication: The Center would undertake programs of communication and

information by conducting workshops and conferences about problems of women.
This function would seek to enlarge the general knowledge in this area among a
variety of individuals and groups. The emphasis would be on dissemination of
information to groups rather than the above-mentioned function of guidance
which focuses on specific individuals and their concerns.

Page Two

V^-ir-

291

E. Development of Financial Aid: The Center would seek to encourage greater numbers
of fellowships, scholarships, and grant -in -aids for the purpose of aiding women

to return to the University. These funds would be administered tlirough tlic normal
University channels .

F. Informal Relrtj on ships: The Center, through its offices, conference facilities
and guidance, \vould naturally evolve as a vehicle tlirough which individuals could
meet oilers who luu'c similar problems and concerns and thus provide personal
interaction which would be supportive to individual efforts.

Staffing The Center would require in the first two years a half-time director, a full-
time administrative assistant advisor, and a full -time secretary --bookkeeper- -
receptionist. These three indiviuals would staff the permanent functions and would
seek to encourage high level participation by qualified volunteers from various
women's organixations and groups connected or involved with the campus such as the
Prytancan Alumnae Association, the Women's Faculty Cl.ub, the Berkeley Women's
Faculty Group, faculty wives, etc.

Physical Facilities: The Center would require a minimum of three offices, a combi
nation conference -library -lounge room, a guidance and advising room and reception
area with prospects for expansion as the program enlarges and the number of
individuals served increases. Such facilities would become available in the Women's
Faculty Clubhouse when that organization and the Men's Faculty Club, stimulated by
the gift of the Haas Family, consolidate their operations in the remodeled and re
decorated facility now operated by the Men's Faculty Club.

Financing: To get this program started, the major cost would be the rehabilitation
and remodeling of the Women's Faculty Club, estimated at $75,000.

The operating costs for the first year are estimated at $25,000. The budget in
subsequent years would be met by a variety means. For example, the Prytanean
Alumnae, Inc. is exploring ways to make available some of its capital assets over a
period of four or five years. Some of the services provided by the Center may be
reimbursed by fees. As the Center continues, its activities will generate interest
on the part of foundations and individuals who could be appealed to for support either
on the basis of specific project grants or outright gifts.

Summary: Rehabilitation of Women's Faculty Club $ 75, 000.00

Operating costs for one year 25,000.00

$100,000.00

292

In undertaking a project of tliis type the Uui varsity would be joining liands with other
institutions which have recognized this need and have established similar useful
centers. Each one of these centers has different characteristics due to its location,
staffing, and institutional needs. Preliminary explorations of the need for tliis type
of center at Berkeley have indicated that there will be an overwhelming acceptance
of the concept of such a center and very extensive use of its services.

University Club Dining Facilities

The Need

In view of tie proposed remodeling of the. Men's Faculty Club to produce
a handsome new University Club with a broadened membership ba.se (as
described elsewhere in detail), there no doubt will be an upsurge in the
use of tliis facility. While the remodeled area will accommodate a
slightly enlarged flow of people, the Club will soon require additional
dining facilities. A handsome new dining facility would reduce any over
crowding and would enhance significantly the gracious atmosphere
created through the Haas Family gift.

The new dining wing would consist of 4,000 square feet. The wing
would be extended from the east side of the present club and would be
contiguous to what is now the main serving area.

Estimated Cost

The estimated total cost of tliis addition is approximately $200,000.
The budget for the facility includes structure, access, serving area,
furniture, fees, plans, specifications and all other costs.

4./22/T 1

293

PROPOSED PRINCIPLES FOR THE JOINT OPERATION
OF THE FACULTY CLUBS *

Background

A^ the present time the Men's Faculty Club has a combined Active
and A; 3'>:: r .a:e nernbership of approximately 1,100, Dues are graduated
by ccacariic raril: with about 60 percent of the membership paying ?>73>0
a month, rbou'b 15 percent paying 6.00 a month, and the remainder
paying t'L.OO a month. Total dues income amounts to approximately
$6,200 a month.

Tli^ Women 1 s Faculty Club has a combined membership of approxi
mately h5C :'.n the Active and Associate categories plus a few
graduate students. Dues are $3.50 a month for Active, $3.00 a month
for Associates, and $1.00 a month for graduate students, with total
dues income amounting to about $1,550 per month.

Prin cities of the Combined Operation

It is proposed to conduct a Combined Operation of the two clubs
for a trial period not to exceed two years from the effective date
of the combination. It is understood that, if the combined operation
proves satisfactory, the long-term goal vill be the creation of a
merged organization with a single set of categories of membership and
a single dues structure.

The combined operation would be operated under the following
set of principles during the trial period:

1. The present corporate structure cf the two Clubs would be
maintained. The financial assets and liabilities of each Club as
of the effective date would not be affected by the combined
operation exept that any accounts receivable or payable from current
operations as of the effective date would be the responsibility of
the separate clubs.

2. Each Club would retain title to its dues and initiation
fee inccne, income from investments, and other income that might
accrue from occasional individual Club-sponsored, events that might
be held in the facilities (e.g. the Men's Club Christmas party,
art sales, etc.) during the period of combined operations except
as noted below.

Beginning with the effective date of the combined operation,
the Women's Faculty Club would transfer one-half of its current
dues and initiation fee income each month to the Combined
Operations in fulfillment of their financial obligations under the
combined operation. All income from opers-fciona of the present Club
buildings, garage, etc., will also accrue to the Combined

Sent to WFC members June 3, 1971

294

Operation as it is earned. The Men's Club will manage the
Combined Operation, which will assume responsibility for all
expenses incurred in the conduct of those activities in both Club. .
Buildings that are related to activities of either Faculty Club. This
includes current expenses, maintenance, insurance, taxes and. other costs
necessary for the Clubs' share of operating expenses.

If for any reason either C? w ub building cannot be used as a residence
facility at substantially the sane level as it has in the past for a
period of more than twc months during the term of this agreement, the
financial arrangements for the joint operation contained herein shall
be reviewed and appropriately modified.

3. The Men's Club will house the administratifcive and regular
fcod preparation services and the Combined Operation staff will provide
the necessary support for billing and dues collection from the members,
of both Clubs. Meal service may be provided by special arrangement in
the Women r s Club if such service is economically feasible. At the end
of six months of joint operation, the operating experience will be
reviewed by the Governing Board.

li. A Current Operating Committee made up of two members, one
representing each Club, would advise the Manager of the Combined Opera
tions on current operating questions. Each Club will name an alternate
to their regular member to insure that a representative will be available
to make decisions. The committee would work with general policy
direction from the Governing Board of the Combined Operation. If the
Operating Committee is unable to reach agreement on an issue, the
question would be submitted to the Governing Board of the combined
facilities for decision.

5. Overall policy for Combined Operation will be developed by a
Governing Board for the joint operation. This board will be made up of
nine members, divided between representatives of the Men's and Women's
Club according to the appoximate ratio of Active and Associate members
of the two Clubs. (At present, this would mean six Men's Club and three
Women's Club representatives.) It would be expccrec" that most issues
could be decided by consessus, but in the event of an ampasse, it would
be understood that in questions involving the use and arrangements of
the present Men's Club facilities appropriate weight would be given to
the majority position of the Men's Club members, and that in questions
involving the use and arrangements of the Women's Club building,
appropriate weight would be given the majority position of the Women's
Club representatives.

6. It is understood that a substantial sum of money mi^ht be
available to the Faculty Clubs to aid in the development of the concept
of the combined and expanded operation. If funding becomes available,
it is understood that there will be a general refurbishing and improving
of the Men's Club building (including the development of an attractive,
upgraded lounge and associated facilities) and repair and. conversion of
the Women's Club building to multi-purpose use such as residence facil
ities and a women's center.

7. Every attempt will be made to provide opportunities for
st-.ff of the Women's Club to transfer to the service staff of
the Combined Operation. Adequate- notice of cessation cf
ccerr.tions will be provided other employees of the W omen's
Club and the Clubs' management will consult jointly on means

r-ffect of the combination on present employees.

295

THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . BERKELEY . CALIFORNIA 94720

July 6, 1972

Dear Members,

I realize it has been some time since I have written you
concerning club matters. Several items have been pending and
I have been awaiting their resolution before writing.

First and possibly foremost in your minds concerns the
operation of our clubhouse. The plan for the first six months
of joint operation did not work out as well as originally
intended. The major faults seemed to be the lack of supervi-

ision of work bein^ done at our building and certain failures
in communication between management, employees, and residents.
Consequently, the Joint Operating Committee after studying the
financial and managerial aspects of the problem has started on
a different arrangement as of July 1, 1972. The following
points explain the present system:

II. As of July 1, 1972, the representatives of the Women's
Faculty Club on the Joint Operating Committee will assume
complete responsibility for the operation and the staffing
of the women's club building.

2. All the income generated by the rental and other sources
related to the women's building will be available for oper
ation of the clubhouse. All the expenses of operation,
both current and the fixed overhead expenses, will be the
responsibility of the Women's Faculty Club. Any surplus or
deficit will be the responsibility of the Women's Faculty
Club.

3. The accounting and other record keeping required by the
Women's Faculty Club as part of the Joint Operation in con
nection with the operation of our clubhouse will continue
to be provided by the Joint Operation.

In keeping with the above points we are continuing Mrs. Curtis
as manager and Mrs. Gordon Britland in the office. Mrs. Curtis
is presently making the arrangements for the other staffing needs
of our building.

Another announcement I am sure most of you will be glad to

296
-2-

hear is that Manning's has been given two months notice. After
September 1, 1972, Mr. Walters, The Faculty Club manager, will
supervise the food service. This move should result in better
food service and less financial overhead. Along this same line
the Faculty Club has been granted a liquor license." The effec
tive date for bar service will be announced as soon as the de
tails are worked out.

Some renovation work and refurbishing will be starting in our
building in the near future. Bids for the work have been re
ceived and requisitions are in the process of being prepared for
phase I (interior painting, rugs, window shades, and some furni
ture). Phase II (drapes, exterior painting, necessary electrical
and plumbing, etc.) will also be arranged for shortly.

Some of you may not know that we had two resignations from
the Board of Directors, Barbara Bolen and Barbara Hoepner. I am
pleased to announce that Betsy Mills has been appointed to the
board and has been elected the Treasurer. Katherine Stauffer ha*
also accepted appointment to the board and will be serving as th<
Membership Chairman. We are most fortunate to have such fine
replacements and appreciate their willingness to serve. We also
appreciate greatly the many hours of service that Barbara Bolen
and Barbara Hoepner gave to the club.

We recently received notice of the recipents of the Lucy Ward
Stebbins Scholarships for 1972-1973. They are Jan Kathleen Gamr
a senior in Psychology, and Jean Marie Heidelberger, a junior in
French.

Should you have any question regarding the club operations
please refer them to Ruth Donnelly during July. I shall be out
of town until the end of the month. Here's wishing all of you a
mosL pleasant summer.

Sincerely,

Mary Lou Norrie

President, Board of Directors.

WOMEN'S FACULTY CUJB REVIEW COMMITTEE, 1972

PROGRESS REPORT TO THE
WFC BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Wed. December 6, 1972

I, Comnxittee organization:

A, The Board of Directors at the November 1,1972 meeting, voted as follows:

n That a new committee, similar to the Committee of Five e 1971a b
appointed to prepare and present a statement of that the Vfomen s
Faculty Club proposes for a merger, pointing out the present ~
unsatisfactory situation. This proposal to be sent to the
Women's Faculty Club members before the Annual Meeting, to be
voted upon there. Also, that recommendations for revision of the
By-laws be made to omit any reference to the sea of members,"

Three Board members were sppointed: Margaret Uridge, chairman; Colette
Seiple, and Martha Stuspf . Two non-Board members were later appointed
by President Mary LOU Norrie. They were: Roberta Park and Dorothy
Randolph. President Norrie to be an ex-officio member and Henry Poppic
to be legal advisor to the Committee was also approved,

B, Meetings:

The Committee has met five times to date, with the first meeting
held Thursday, November 16th. Mr. Poppic attended the third meeting,
November 28th, and Vice-Chancellor Kerley the fourth meeting Nov. 30th,

C, The Committee had frank discussions at all meetings, exploring various
proposals. These discussions were summarized in "Notes on the Meetings",
prepared by the Chairman, which became a starting point for the discussior
in the following meetings.

The Committee as a whole has review^fchis report and amended it as it saw i

II, Background information:

A, The Coasnittee members were given copies of the following:

l)Letter of Pres.Mary Lou Norrie, to WFC members, of Feb. 23, 1971, as a
review of the proposals for merger to that date, 2)"Proposed principles
for the Joint Operation of the Faculty Clubs" May 25,1971. 3)Letters' of
Oct. 17 from Joe Garbarino; N*ov.8, in answer, from M.L. Norrie; Nov.ll;,

in answer to that, from Joe Garbarino, Pres. of The Faculty Club.

B, Previous action on proposed merger:

1) January 9,1971 Report of the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Men's and
Women's Faculty Club was voted down by the WFC membership Feb. 1971.

2) WFC Committee of Five legal agreement proposal for Join Operations,
dated March 29, 1971, was refused by the Men's Club representatives.

3) Modified "Proposed Principles of Joint Operations..." agreed to 5/2 5/

C, Unsatisfactory situation of the Joint Operations:

1, Accounting & Management:

a. July 1, 1972, .at suggestion of the Men's Club President, the Womei
Club took over the management of the WFC building, with rentals,
maintenance, etc., because of frequent complaints about lack of
maintenance and concern for the up-keep of the building.

b, November 1, 1972, again at the suggestion of the Men's Club Presi<
Women's Faculty Club took back the billing of its own members,
including the bills for meals in the Men's Club, and the WFC dues,

2, "Proposed principles of Joint Operations" not followed:

a. Governing Board never irsplemented* WFC members were appointed, bu1

those from the Men's Club were not.

b. Manager reported to the President of the ''en's Club, not to the

Joint Operations Committee, & tended to ignore WFC needs.

c. Billing operations followed By-Laws of Men's Club } with no prior

agreement with HFC reprssantatives, with their "delinquent" c.

298 ^

III. Proposals discussed:

A, Joint Operations continue with following points:

1. Manager reports to Joint Operations Committee, not to the

Men's Club President; and thus can be fired by the Joint
Operations Committee.

2. Activate, as in the agreed upon Proposals, the Joint Operations

Governing Board.

3. Suggestions that an outside group make a management survey.

B v Women's Faculty Club building:

1. Maintain present character of the lounge, library & dining-room.

2. Develope long-term plans on utilization of the building, including

residential and first-floor rooms use.

3. Importance of the fact that the majority of the present members

of the WFC feel very strongly about the building, the members
having built it and paid for it, and are now out of debt; and
that there was misunderstanding about the amount of refurbishing
would be paid for by the BB gift (which did pay for the
installation of sprinklers. )

U- Should be structurally joined to the Men's Faculty Club building to
form a Faculty Center. The afmosphere it offers complements that
of the Men's Club - neither replaces the other. The WFC lounge
is especially useful for receptions.

5. Parking area - with the recommendation previously made that the

new Optometry wing be built to have its proposed open court
toward the WFC building.

6. Would the WFC membership vote to release the building to the

University if the latter said it would be used as a symbolic

center for wcmen's activities on canpus.

One suggestion being made that the Academic Women Ombudsman be
located in the presently-unused room rented to the Center for
Continuing Education for Women.
C. Areas of conflict in combining the two clubs into one organization:

1, Membership: Qualifications, dues, voting (WFC members run the WFC,

while Ken's Club Board runs theirs, even to changing By-Laws.)

2, Men's Club By-Laws that include House rules for their building.

3, Debt of the Men's Club.

Proposal to organize a new Corporation, called the Faculty Center:

1. Articles of incorporation to include both roen and women without
discrimination, and with women guaranteed to be on Board.

2. Agreement included on the payment of the Men's Club debt -

out of the profits, after a proportion set-aside for a maintenan
and renovation fund.

3. Membership to include a "grandfather clause" for all members of bo

present clubs; base of membership broadened to include administr
campus personnel and non-tenured faculty, including lecturers,
and also graduate students, such as Teaching Assistants.
Non-members restricted in use of the club facilities, aa members i
dues helps to defray costs of the Center.
1+. An "out-reach" program to attract the younger academics on campus.

5. Proposal that the new organization have entirely new management
personnel drew considerable discussion and strong disagreement
from one menber^ of the Committee.

6. The Bar license could be transferred to the new organization, and
would help to pay off the deficits from the dining-room and also
the Men's Club debt.

299

P.3

For Action:
A. Facts that need to be detenrined :

1. Use of the residential rooms of the WFC during last few years.

2. Use of the lounge of WFC bldg. during last few years.

3. Turn-away applicants for residential rooms at Men s Club
1. Turn-away applicants for use of special rooms at Men's Club

*> Profit & Loss Statement of WFC^for several immediately past years.

6, Corporation status of Men's clubT^^ * VV^o

7. Terns of the Haas gift.

B. Implement ati on :

1. Ask Ruth Donnelly to determine "utilization of WFC " statistics.

2. Ask D.Keller, Josephine Smith & Betsy Mills to collect the profit &

Loss figures. A-rr v ^'^ c -^

3. Colette Seiple follow- through on suggestion that Vice-Chancellor's

Management group could assist ' possibly they could get figures
of utilization of Men's Ciub, and their profit & loss during the
Joint Operation & before; and the turn-sway figuresj also getting

copies of the Haas gift terras.
1^, Review Committee to follow-up on request jbo^Sacraraento for

Articles of Incorporation of Men's Club, J * ( wnich Mr. Poppic had

written 4v Nov. 22,1972.
C, Preparation for a possible new organizations

1. M.L.Norrie and M.D. Uridge to draft a Constitution & By-Laws,
or Articles & By-laws, to cover points recocmended.

D.. Committee to prepare a statement regarding the utilization of the
,Wonn's Faculty Club Building?

1, As a structural part of the proposed Faculty Center

2. As a separate building, turned over to the University-^^

E. Ccrarsittee to present proposal, for the Board to present to the
Menfcership of the Women's Faculty Jlub for the Annual Meeting.

Respectfull submitted

(Mrs.) Margaret Dl Uridge, Committee Ch

Dl U

Committee: Roberta Park

Dorothy Randolph
Colette Seiple

V J * r*

^ *

Martha Stumpf

Margaret Uridge (chairman)

Mary Lou Norrie (ex-officio)

300

THE WOMENS' FACULTY CLUB . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA * BERKELEY . CALIFORNIA 94720

RESOLUTION OP
BOARD OP DIRECTORS

OP
THE WOMEN'S FACULTY CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, INC.

WHEREAS, the Board has concluded that it is in the best interests of the
members of The Women's Faculty Club of the University of California, Inc.
and of the Faculty Club of the University of California that the corporate
entities, administration, and operation of the two Clubs should be merged
into a new Club known as the "Berkeley Faculty Club", and that the merger
would promote the purposes for which each of the Clubs was organized;

WHEREAS, the Board has examined the Agreement of Merger and the Terms of
Merger between the Faculty Club of the University of California and The
Women's Faculty Club of the University of California, Inc., and the By-Laws
of the Berkeley Faculty Club presented to the Board;

NOW, THEREFORE, be it hereby

RESOLVED, that the said Agreement of Merger, the said Terms of Merger,
and the said By-Laws, and each and all of their terms and conditions,
are hereby approved;

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the President and Secretary are hereby authorized
and directed to execute and acknowledge the said Agreement of Merger
in the name of and on behalf of this corporation;

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the officers of this corporation are authorized
and directed to call a special meeting of the members of this corporation
for the purpose of considering and voting on the said Agreement of Merger,
the said Terms of Merger, and the said By-Laws, and to seek their adoption
at that meeting by a majority of the enfranchised members of this corpo
ration, or, without calling a special meeting of the members of this corpo
ration, to seek the written consent to the said Agreement of Merger, the
said Terms of Merger, and the said By-Laws, of two- thirds of the enfran
chised members of this corporation; and

FURTHER RESOLVED, that upon approval as herein provided of the said Agree
ment of Merger and the said Terms of Merger by the enfranchised members
of this corporation, the officers of this corporation are directed to
execute, acknowledge, file, and record such instruments, and perform all
acts necessary or proper to effect the terms and conditions of the said
Agreement of Merger and of the said Terms of Merger on behalf of this
corporation.

So voted September 15, 197^ at a regularly scheduled
meeting of the Board of Directors of The Women' s
Faculty Club of the University of California, Inc.

301

STATEMENT AGAINST TEE PROPOSED MERGER

Because the President of the Women's Faculty Club has received
a number of letters arguing against the merger, she has appointed
a committee to summarize these arguments. (The original letters
may be seen in the Women's Faculty Club office, or copies will be
sent to members requesting them.)

The arguments are both general and specific. In general, the
argument is that merger is too extreme a form of what the Regents
in 1971 called "agreement to consolidate the management operations
of the Women's Faculty Club and the Faculty Club," as a contingency! o
acceptance of the gift from the Strauss Associates. Further, the
effort at "Joint Operation" in 1972 though unsuccessful, is held
by the Faculty Club to have satisfied this requirement. The feeling
now is that the merger is too obliterative of the separate identities
of the two clubs, and that homogenization is as antiquated as total
separation. Some form of shared membership and cooperative campus
service is suggested, without the sacrifice of the Women's Faculty
Club's own characteristic spirit and life-style which the concept
of merger entails.

Specifically, there are four arguments:

l)That the Women's Faculty Club should not take on the Faculty
Club's dues and assessment, and voting structure and their
membership limitations.

2) That the Women's Faculty Club should not take on or become a
part of the faculty Club's book-keeping and accounting system,
but should keep its own separate accounts, whatever the
cooperative methods to be established.

3) That the Women's Faculty Club should not take on the Faculty
Club's assets and liabilities*

4)That the Women's Faculty Club should not take on the Faculty
Club's management procedures which are counter to the Women's
Faculty Club spirit and life-style, in establishing of tone,
in treatment of personnel* and in many other ways demonstrated
in the 1972 experiment.

In sum, that the concept of cooperation rather tLan that of merger
would make possible, without loss of identity, the greater amount
of service to the campus community.

Committee for Summarizing Objections

to the Merger

Josephine Miles, Chairman.
9/28/76

302
JOSEPHINE E. SMITH 29 MOSSWOOD ROAD . BERKELEY CALIFORNIA . 94704

November 11, 976
A FINANCIAL WARNING-

Did any of those who signed the 1^2 affirmative proxies atop to think of the
effect upon their personal finances if the terms of the merger committee
were adopted?

Adoption of these terms would lay each member open, individually, to whatever
assessment the Board of Directors of the Faculty Club decided to levy. And
in addition to this and to the $800 per annum which The Women's Faculty Club
is requested to provide toward the interest on the Faculty Club's debt, there
is the Faculty Club's notably large debt itself.

An assessment is not just some vague threat which may happen in the future. It
happened to the members of the Faculty Club three months ago. The income was
not sufficient to cover the expenses lius the interest and payment on the debt.
The result was that each member was assessed $10. Such assessment can happen at
any time in the future.

At the present time, and with our present set-up, no member of The Women's Facult
Club can be assessed, nor can the officers or individual members of the Club
be sued in a court of law. But if the membership of The Women's Faculty Club
be merged with that of the Faculty Club, the individual members of each can be
assessed at whatever time and in whatever amount the Board of Directors of the
the Faculty Club may, in its wisdom, decide.

The question of assessment is a very minor matter compared to the shared res-
ponsibili.ty for the Faculty Club's large debt. The terms of the merger committe'
call for the consolidation of the assets and liabilities of both clubs. The
Women's Faculty Club has no debt - only assets,, The Faculty Club has a very
large debt and v/ould, naturally, like controlnot only of our assets, but would
like The Women's Faculty Club to share responsibility for their debt as well.
If the terms of the merger are adopted, we are then open to assessment, and
also for the financial responsibility when it comes to repayment of the debt.

According to the Balance Sheet of the Faculty Club, rendered by Raskins and
Sells. as of June 30, 1976, the "Long Term Debt"stands, as of that date at
$178.,143. The agreement calls for "Annual Installments of $17,187 including
interest to 1990". According to the statement, it was this installment
which the Faculty Club was not able to meet - hence, the "special assessment
of $14,400" shown, in the first item on page 3 of the Financial Raport.

303 -2-

A Financial Yearning - continued

(Note: There are several items in this report open to critical inspection
but it is not pertinent to the general subject to call attention to them
here. However, it should be noted that at any time the Faculty Club fails
to meet its quota, assessment, levied on the members, will be the
inevitable result . )

There seems to have been a "conspiracy of silence" in failing to mention the
amount of this debt. It can be understood why the Faculty Club might not wish
to announce the total at this stage of the game. But WHY did not The Women's
Faculty Club's Board of Directors ascertain the exact amount of the debt, and
its terms. They knew of its existence. WHY was this total not mentioned in
the material sent out to the membership for vote? especially since the Board
was recommending the merger "in the best interest" of the Club? Is it "in the
best interest" for the members to assume a financial responsibility of this
size? To ask the membership to assume responsibility without telling them
either the amount concerned, or the terms of the debt, seems unbelievable.

Do you really think that "progress" (so-called) and "the best interests of the
Club" are served by opening our members to assessment and individual assumption
of share in the Faculty Club's debt?

Since it has been proposed to hand *1T control of every sort over to the manager
of the Faculty Club and with a 2:1 ratio on the proposed governing board, any
protest that we could make would not have the slightest chance of being heard.

FACE THE FACTS. VOTE WITH YOUR EYES OPEN.

Note: This mailing is being sent out at no
expense to The Women's Faculty Club.

304

INDEX Women's Faculty Club

Abbo, Gaston, and Mrs.., 10-12, 88, 137-140, 196, 242
Adams, Mrs. George P., 60
Albro, Mary, 96

Allen, Professor and Mrs., 8

Armstrong, Barbara Nachtrieb, 29, 39, 63, 68, 70, 186, 209
Association of Academic Women, 168, 169

Bacon, Madi, 97

Barnes, Patricia, 131, 195, 196

Barrows, David Prescott, 205, 206

Barton, Babette, 116, 117, 171, 173, 187, 189, 192, 193

Battle, Mabel, 8

Beattie, Douglas, 64

Beattie, Margaret, 5, 64, 70

Bender, Albert, 16, 54

Benedict, Henry Harshaw, 24

Ben's Forum, 171, 172, 176

Berkeley Fire, 1923, 33, 53, 74, 101

Bird, Rose, 109

Birge, Ann, 171

Bishop, Joy, 107

Bishop, Katherine, 70

Black Sheep Restaurant, Berkeley, 181

Blair, Phyllis, 171

Bos chan, Alice, 240, 241

Bowen, Catherine Drinker, 66

Bowker, Albert, 171

Boys , Howard M. , 207

Branch, Mrs. Gerald E.K. , 52, 62

Bressler, Boris, 196, 198

Bridgman, Olga, 73, 82

Briggs, Doras, 157, 170, 187, 189, 192, 203

Britt, Doris, 233

Erode, Robert, 76, 196-198

Brown, Dorothy, 112

Bruce, Harold, 99

Bumstead, Amy, 9, 10, 86, 99, 126, 127, 132, 135

Bumstead, Frank, 99

Byrd, Admiral Richard E. , 69

305

Cahill, James, 175

Caldwell, James, 118

Campbell, Orvin W. , 199

Cardwell, Kenneth., 188

Chandler, Dorothy, 191

Cheney , May , 46

Chickering, Martha, 2Q9

Christie, Vera, 184, 204

Cline, James, 104

Clynes, Manfred, 223

Cockrell, Robert, 167, 196, 198

College Women's Club, Berkeley, 30, 51

Coney, Donald, 85

Coulter, Edith, 4, 6, 7, 13, 29-31, 43-45, 63, 70, 81, 82, 183-185

Coulter, Mabel, 17, 30

Coxhead, Ernest, 40

Cunningham, Dr. Ruby L. , 56

Curtis, Florence, 141-143, 217

Czarnowski, Lucille, 36, 48, 77, 88, 129, 133, 134

Dadone, Lotte, 237, 243, 246

Davidson, Mary B. , 7, 43, 45, 64, 74, 78, 86, 127, 128, 134, 135, 141, 209;

Portrait, 213, 218, 235
Davis, Alice, 234
Davis, Ann, 152
Davis, Natalie, 167

Davis, Sarah, 4, 43, 44, 70, 71, 91, 183
Dettner, Anne Low-Beer, 198, 200
Deutsch, Monroe, 49, 54, 55

Diamond, Marion, 20, 108, 120, 157, 166; Interview, 170-179; 189, 234
Donnelly, Ruth, 7, 12, 14, -15, 78, 165
Dornin, May, 36, 77; Interview, 81-102; 129, 159
Duggan, Charles, 223

Eckert, Helen, 168

Efendiev, Ajaz Adil Ogly, 221-223

Ehlers, Alice, 66

Emma (Women's Faculty Club cook,), 141

English in Action, 222

Ervin-Tripp, Susan, 121, 168, 171, 192, 193, 203

Espenschade, Anna, 19, 56

Evans , G . C . , 151

306

Faculty Club, 2, 3, 13-21, 30, 53, 81, 104, 105, 114-116, 120, 131, 132, 140,

158, 159, 171-179, 210, 212, 213; The Monks, 60, 64
Fancher, Helen, 4, 5, 62
Faubion, Clarus, 183, 189
Fix, Evelyn, 155, 156
Planner, Hildegard, 104
Fleming, John, 232, 252, 253
Flynn, Joseph, 2Q8

Gallo, Lori, 241

Gardner, Eleanor, 73

Gayley, Charles Mills, 55, 1Q1

Gedrose, Mr. , 141, 142

George, Julia, 53

Gladding, Hope, 20, 31, 34-36, 38, 53-55, 58, 62, 71-73, 90, 209

Goodell and Henry, auditors, 2

Goodman, Michael, 177

Gordon-Britland, Gudveig, 10; Interview, 124-148; 242

Gorman's, Berkeley, 35

Greer, Alice, 60

Grey, Constance, 62

Gunthorp, Pauline, 84, 85

Haas Gift (to Women's Faculty Club), 39, 115, 117, 118, 161-163, 199-201

Habib, Philip, 202

Haskins and Sells, auditors, 17

Hearst, Catherine, 191

Hearst, Phoebe Apperson, 53, 101

Heartz, Daniel, 232

Heiss, Ann, 189

Heller, Eleanor, 190, 191

Hey man, Ira Michael, 19

Heyns, Roger, 12, 16, 115, 117, 118, 161, 187-189, 196-199

Hildebrand, Joel H. , 20, 27

Hilgard, Alice Rose, 18

Hill, James, 175

Hodges, Joseph, 159

Horn, David, 239

Howard, John Galen, 3, 31, 32, 35

Huntington, Emily, 64, 107, 110, 111. 164, 165, 181, 198, 200

Hutchison, Claude, 69

"Images of California," 112
Inouye, Ari, 247

307

James, Dulcie, 196

Jepson, Willis, 204

Jennings., Richard, 167

Johnson, Mary Ann, 2Q, 165; Interview, 180-203

Johnson, Phillip, 116, 117

Jones, Mary Cover, 52

Kaufman, Joanna, 243, 244, 246, 247

Kay, Herma, 167, 172, 192, 193

Kerley, Betty Strenl, 191

Kerr, Clark, 68, 109, 161, 188
Koshland, Marian, 172

Larson, Adeline, 189

LeBlanc, Julienne, 241, 251, 252

Lee, Midge, 240

Lent, May, 44, 64

Leonard, Professor , 46

Leupp, Harold, 70, 83-85

Levy, Sophia, 3, 30, 151

Lewis, G.N., 20

Lipman, Charles, 49

Little, Evelyn, 61

Louderback, George D. , 20, 204

Low-Beer, Anne, 198, 200

loyalty oath., University of California, Berkeley, 20, 56, 75, 76

Lundberg, Olaf, 25

Lyon, Mary, 22

McAbee, Mr. , 15

McCrodden, Kay, 215, 238

MacDonald, John, 151

McGrail, Katherine, 170

McLellan, Agnes, 88, 98

Martin, Kate, 131-133, 137-140, 240

Martin, Nella Jane, 30, 81

May, Bernice, 11

Maybeck, Edward, 3

Meads, Romilda Paroni, 56

Mel, Florence Nachtrieb, 17, 18, 39

Men's Faculty Club. See Faculty Club

Middleton, Anne, 111, 114

Miles, Josephine, 4; Interview, 103-123; 159, 163, 171, 232-234, 243

Miller, Blanche, 78
Miller, Lea, 210, 211

308

Mills College, 16, 54

Minard, Florence, 54, 16Q, 200, 236, 239
Mitchell, Gertrude, 186-188
Mitchell, SidneyB., 83-85, 99
Mois, Elsa, 97
Moore, Marian, 61, 97

Morgan, Agnes Faye, 3-6, 29, 30, 43, 45, 48, 55, 68, 69, 75, 82, 109
Morgan, Julia, 32
Morrey, Charles B. , 152
Morrow, Marian, 78
Mo\mt" Holyoke College, ^22

Munson (secretarial) School, San Francisco, 205

Murdock, Margaret, 2, 5, 9, 10; Interview, 29-66; 72, 96, 127, 131-133,
136, 137, 236

Nader, Laura, 161, 165, 192, 193

Neely, Betty, 189, 129

Neyman, Jerzy, 152, 156, 165

Nicewonger, Harriet, 164

Nichols, Evelyn, 237, 241, 245

Niehaus, Hazel, 208

Noble, Emily, 209

Norrie, Mary Lou, 110, 111, 116, 143, 144, 174, 198, 200

Okey, Ruth, 75, 107, 109

Owens, Aletha litmus, 173, 187, 189, 190, 196, 198

Papenfuss, George, 66

Pandit, Madam Vijayalakshmi, 190

Park, Roberta, 165

Patterson, Mary Frances, 3-5, 45, 48, 54, 62, 71, 73

Peixotto, Jessica, 3, 29., 42-44, 49, 54, 58, 67, 68, 70, 82

Peters, Stefan, and Mrs., 156, 157

Peterson, Margaret, 56

Philips, Anna, 230

Phipps, Lucille, 129, 130, 195, 196

Pickard, Edith, 98

Pierce, Chikako, 237

Pitkin, Hanna, 176

Poppic, Henry, 14

Price, Christine, 60, 84-86, 88

Prytanean Association, University of California, Berkeley, 111-113, 163, 165

Putnam, Thomas M. , 68

309

Quire, Catherine, 76, 78, 182

Radcliffe, Caroline, 126, 129, 131, 132

Randolph, Dorothy, 165

Ranson, Muriel, 9, 54, 73

Ristine, Elizabeth, 2Q7

Ritter, Mary, 56

Robb, Agnes, 24; Interview, 67-75; 204

Robinson, Julia, 152

Rockwell, Maxine, 9, 18, 202, 214, 216, 217, 220, 223, 235, 237-239, 241,

249, 251

Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. , 232, 243
Rowell, Chester, 68
Rowell, Joseph C. , 83

St. Moritz Ice Skating Club, Berkeley, 208

Sanderson, Imogen, 34, 35

Sartori, Margaret, 53

Saxon, David, 19, 172

Scott, Elizabeth., 110-113, 121, 122; Interview, 149-169; 171, 172, 176, 193

Secrist, Ida, 86

Seiple, Colette, 165

Senior, Sally, 234

Shane, C. Donald, 153, 154, 158

Sherman, Lily Margaret, 50

Sierra Club, 27

Simpson, John, 68

Singleton, Caroline Bates, 43

Sizer, Patricia, 73

Smith College, 22

Smith, Josephine, Interview, 1-27; 32, 33, 40, 50, 64, 72, 79, 96, 115,

117, 140, 141, 154, 173, 174, 200, 201, 211
Smith, Peter, 163
Smith, Sophia, 22

Sperry, Pauline, 3, 30, 55, 104-109, 120, 151, 153, 154, 156
Sproul, Ida W. , 52, 76; Portrait, 235

Sproul, Robert Gordon, 24, 55, 70, 72, 73, 75-77, 185, 204-206
Staubus, Sarah., 171
Stauffer, Katharine, 165
Stebbins, Horatio, 41
Stebbins, Lucy, 2, 5, 12, 19, 29, 31, 41-46, 53, 55, 58, 62, 64, 67, 68, 70,

74, 81, 82, 86, 91, 92, 182, 183, 209; Portrait, 218, 235
Stephens, Eenry Morse, 55
Stern, Mrs. Sigmund, 53
Stewart, George, 118
Stewart, Ruth., 27
Stumpf, Martha, 165
Sturgess, Sara Huntsman, 48, 62

310

Tabor, Alice, 3, 4, 30, 55, 107

Tatlock, J.S.P., 106

Thal-Larsen, Margaret, 10, 173, 198, 210

Thomas, Jerome F. , 234

Tokunaga, Chiyoko, 97

Towle, ^Catherine, 57, 73, 78, 108

Travers, Pauline, 66, 93

Twist, Vera May, 180

University of California, Berkeley
Academic Senate, 167

Academic women, 76, 103-115, 120, 151-157, 192-195
Accounting Department, 23-25

Building and Campus Development Committee, 225
Cowell Hospital, 56, 91, 102
Dean of Women's Office, 7, 43, 78, 82
Departments

Astronomy, 151-153

Economics, 42, 77, 164

Education, 10, 46-48

English, 103-105, 111-114, 118, 120

Household Art, 4, 5, 44

Household Science, 4, 5, 69

Mathematics, 151, 152, 155, 164

Music, 58, 61

Nutrition, 4, 5, 82, 109

Physical Education, 48, 49, 77, 100, 101, 116, 151

Political Science, 176, 205, 206, 208-211

Statistics, Statistical Lab, 152, 156, 164
Faculty Clubs. See Faculty Club; Women's Faculty Club
Library, 83

Regents, 4, 13, 159, 160, 184-186, 188, 201, 246
Sather Tower Bells, 59, 66
School of Libxarianship, 83, 85
School of Public Health., 93
Senior Men's Hall, 159, 186, 197
University High School, 149, 150
Women on campus, 25, 82, 180, 193, 194, 206, 207, 226. See University

of California Academic women

Women's Center, 91, 111-113, 146, 163-166, 191

Uridge, Margaret, 7, 9, 17, 18, 115-121, 144-148, 161, 163, 165, 211, 213,
217, 218, 227, 228, 231, 238

Vail, Virginia, 127

Van Horn, Eleanor; Interview, 204-224; 235, 236

Varsity Restaurant, Berkeley, 181

311

Walters, Chuck, 15, 115, 142-145

Warnke, Fred, 246

Weber, Julius, 59, 60

Welcome, Jane, 190

Wellington, Winfield Scott, 54, 55, 58

Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, and Mrs., 53

White, Doris, 18

Wickson, Katherine R., 86

Wightman, Clara, 189

Wilkerson, Margaret, 172

Wilier, Norma, 202, 210, 213, 214, 216, 218, 220

Williams, Katherine Van Valer, 119-121, 123, 214, 216-219; Interview, 225-253

Williams, Mary Floyd, 97, 98

Wilson, Garff, 48

Women's City Club, Berkeley, 30, 51

Women's Faculty Club

Ad Hoc Committee (1967-1971), 196-201

Annual Dinner, 63, 91, 92, 191

art show, 12, 190

auditing, 2, 17, 132, 133, 141

Board meetings, 118, 119, 166, 168, 171-174, 182-189, 195, 232-234, 238,
239, 252, 253

Building Committee, 4-7, 31, 183-187

cat, Hepzibah, 86, 87

Christmas parties, 60, 61, 203

dinner club, 106, 107, 109

family Table, 13, 14, 87, 93, 129, 137

foreign scholars resident at, 19, 66, 93, 97-99, 220-224

furnishings, 34-36, 185, 202, 211-220, 229, 230

garden, 235, 243-248

Joint Operations, 142-148. See Women's Faculty Club merger

kitchen, 8, 18, 38, 73, 76, 131-133, 137-142, 202, 220, 221, 240-242, 251

liquor allowed in, 12, 89, 90, 138, 139, 241, 242

location, early surroundings, 58, 100-102

Lunch and Learn, 66, 74, 203

lunch groups, academic, 121, 122, 154, 168, 171, 172, 176, 192, 193

managers. See Abbo, Gaston; Barnes, Patricia; Curtis, Florence;

James, Dulcie; Ransom, Muriel; Radcliffe, Caroline; Rockwell, Maxine

membership, 33, 34, 49, 51, 52, 71, 155, 174, 175, 181, 182, 219,
226, 236, 237

merger, with The Faculty Club, 8, 11, 13-21, 39, 115-118, 142-148,
160-169, 188, 189, 196-201, 211, 212, 228, 229

mortgage, 55, 160, 184

nuns resident at, 94, 95

office, 38, 126-148

parties, 60-63

pianos, 61, 96

Professional Advancement Committee, 19, 192

312

Dmen's Faculty Club, cont.

residence at, 13, 36, 37, 66, 74, 85-99, 157, 215, 216, 220-224

residence, length of, 36, 110, 111, 195

rugs, 15, 18, 142, 147

treasures of, 16, 38, 53, 54, 215

world wars, 57, 65
Dods, Mrs. Baldwin, 6

ERRATA SHEET

The Women's Faculty Club of the University of California,

Berkeley, 1919-1982

Page Number

Line

Correction

iii

18th from top

"Lucille" should be "Lucile"

15th from top

"Helena" should be "Helene"

7th from bottom

"Lucille" should be "Lucile"

18th from top

"Lucille Czarnovski" should be "Lucile
Czarnowski"

4th from top

"JMM" should be "MM"

6th from top

"Ranson" should be "Ransom"

101

122

185

204

205

206

19th from top
14th from top
18th from top
21st from top
23rd from top
19th from top
12th from bottom
14th from top
18th from bottom
10th from bottom
9th from bottom
1st from bottom
10th from bottom

llth from top
10th from bottom

18th from top

"controller's" should be "comptroller's"
"Lucille" should be "Lucile"
"tools" should be "schools"
"Lucille" should be "Lucile"
"Kurt" should be "Curt"
"Mois" should be "Mols"
"peacefull" should be "peaceful"
"Big Chill" should be "Big C hill"
"Pheobe" should be "Phoebe"
"What that" should be "Was that"
"principle" should be "principal"
"controller" should be "comptroller"
"controller's" should be "comptroller's"

"Controller's" should be "Comptroller's"

Suzanne Bassett Riess

Grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Graduated from Goucher College, B.A. in
English, 1957.

Post-graduate work, University of London
and the University of California, Berkeley,
in English and history of art.

Feature writing and assistant woman's page
editor, Globe-Times, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Free-lance writing and editing in Berkeley.
Volunteer work on starting a new Berkeley
newspaper .
Natural science decent at the Oakland Museum.

Editor in the Regional Oral History Office
since I960, interviewing in the fields of
art, cultural history, environmental design,
photography, Berkeley and University history.

r \

"Remarks to the Women's Faculty Club on the

Occasion of its Sixtieth Anniversary and the
First Oral Histories," by Norma Wilier.

/'*<

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